of “Fire,” is the most thrilling of all to a floating community.
“Man overboard!”
A rush was made aft. The confusion and excitement among the passengers were indescribable. Men talked, women shrieked, and one fainted. And above this scene of terror and uproar, a tall figure, lightly clad, was seen to spring upon the taffrail. For just a second it stood poised, then with hands joined above the head, sprang far out in a splendid dive. And in that second the dismayed onlookers had time to make out the form of Dick Selmes.
At the sight a cheer broke forth, somewhat quavering, to be sure. Roughly charging through the crowd a quarter-master leapt aft, and with deft and powerful sweep of the arm hurled the lifebuoy in his hand far out and across the path of the swimmer. But the latter passed it unheeded. He required nothing to hamper his pace, as with a strong, swift side stroke he clove his way through and over the tumble of the waves. The “man overboard” was now seen to be a small boy, and he had already sunk twice. No, there was no time to be lost.
But even in that brief fraction of a minute Harley Greenoak had flung off his coat, and muttering, “He’s bound to need help,” had leaped upon the rail and sprung out into the sea, cleaving his way with no less powerful strokes to where the two were struggling.
Dick had reached the drowning boy, and was holding him up in firm athletic grasp, but there was a nasty choppy sea running, which, breaking into spume, both blinded and choked him. He was treading water now, as though to wait until the boat should be lowered. But Harley Greenoak had picked up the lifebuoy and was towing it towards the pair, whom in a few minutes he was seen to reach. Then something like a gasp of relief escaped the spectators. Those two powerful men, with the aid of the lifebuoy, should have no difficulty in keeping both themselves and their charge afloat until they were picked up. But there was one to whom this consideration brought little if any relief at all, and that one was Sir Anson Selmes.
The agony of the unhappy father was simply hideous to endure. The conversation of a minute or two back burnt into his brain like letters of fire. These waters were swarming with sharks, and had not Greenoak just declared that no consideration would tempt him to venture into the sea at this point. Yet hardly had the words left his mouth than he deliberately did that very thing. Even his frenzied apprehension for the safety of his son could not dim a glow of admiration for this cool, brave man who had courted the ghastly death he himself had pronounced to be almost certain, when the object was the saving of life. Every second seemed an hour, every minute a week. Would they never lower that boat?
But the way on the steamer was far too great to allow of her being stopped at once, consequently she was being brought round to the submerged three, and although this could not be done all in a minute, it could be in far less time than that taken to pull a boat any distance in such a choppy sea.
Hurrah! The boat dropped from the davits, and went plashing through the waves as fast as sinew and muscle could send her.
“We’re all jolly,” bawled Dick Selmes, “only look sharp. It’s beastly cold.”
The words, audible to those on the ship, raised a laugh that rounded off into a mighty cheer, as the boat was seen to gain its objective and the three were hoisted in.
“Thirteen minutes from the time of going over the side,” said the officer in charge of the ship, closing his watch with a snap. “Not bad time that, sir?”
“No. It’s good,” said the captain, who, half asleep in his cabin, had been roused by the uproar and had quickly ascended to the bridge.
“Drowned rat Number One,” sang out Dick Selmes, shoving the cause of all the bother in front of him, as they gained the deck. Then there was a great deal of hugging and kissing on the part of the mother, which was cut short by the decisive voice of the doctor, ordering the drenched and shivering boy to be taken below at once.
“Dick, you scoundrel, what do you mean by behaving like that?” exclaimed Sir Anson rather unsteadily, as he wrung the defaulter’s hands again and again. “What d’you mean by it, sir? Ah, Greenoak, I told you you’d find him a handful, and he’s lost no time in backing up what I said. And you – Why, man, after what you were just telling me – swarming with sharks, eh? Heroic – that’s what it is. You’re a hero, sir – both heroes – and – ”
“I say, dad,” interrupted Dick, quizzically, “let’s have the speech later. We want to go and change and get something hot. I swear I do.”
This raised a great laugh among the lookers on, tailing off into a cheer, in the midst of which the dripping ones disappeared in the companion way, followed by Sir Anson.
Chapter Two.
A Beginning
“Good-bye, Greenoak.”
“Good-bye, Sir Anson.”
“No need to repeat my absolute confidence in leaving him in your hands,” went on the latter. “You’re already begun by saving his life.”
“Oh, as to that I only helped him. He’d have been all right anyhow,” replied Greenoak. “And,” he added, “you won’t mind my reminding you of one agreement – that of that subject we have heard more than enough!”
“I agreed to nothing of the sort. It’s a subject of which we could not hear enough! Well, Greenoak, when your wanderings with the boy are over, come back home with him and make a good long stay at our place, though we have nothing more ferocious to shoot than pheasants and hares. Is that a promise?”
“Delighted, Sir Anson.”
The above conversation took place in the otherwise empty smoking-room of the Port Elizabeth Club. The old gentleman was returning to England that afternoon, incidentally by the same liner that had brought them out. It would be more comfortable, he reckoned, than returning by a strange boat, and the sooner Dick set off on his travels the better; a theory, by the way, which was held by Dick even more firmly than by his father. The said Dick now put in his appearance.
“Time, dad,” he said, comparing his watch with the mantelpiece clock. “The last launch, you know, and she won’t wait. So come along.”
“Good-bye again, Greenoak,” said Sir Anson, as the two men heartily gripped hands. “And don’t forget your promise.”
“Good-bye to you, Sir Anson. And I won’t.”
So Dick and his father betook themselves to the landing-place, and Harley Greenoak betook himself to lunch. With characteristic judgment he had divined that father and son would prefer to be alone together at the last, and so had refrained from seeing the old gentleman off to the ship. Now as he sat in the club dining-room he was thinking, and his thoughts, needless to say, ran upon the charge he had just undertaken. To that end he was rather glad there was nobody he knew in the room.
Needless to say, too, that after the episode off Danger Point, which might so nearly have ended in tragedy, the tendency now among his fellow-passengers was to make very much of a hero of Dick Selmes, and more especially did this hold good of the “fair” section thereof. It was as well, perhaps, decided Harley Greenoak, that only a day or two remained for the absorption of all this adulation. Towards himself the tendency was not so marked, for which he was unaffectedly glad. He had borne part in too many strange and perilous episodes in his time for one, more or less, to afflict him with “swelled head.” It was all in the day’s work.
Dick Selmes, of course, had plenty of invitations, and could have got through six months easily before he had run through them
