Yet the under-tow took me not back to sea, for amid the floating wreckage floated the shattered maintop, and in the truck of that great spar I caught, and so was left with it upon the beach thirty paces from the men and Elzevir.

Then he left his own assured salvation, namely the rope, and strode down again into the very jaws of death to catch me by the hand and set me on my feet.

Sight and breath were failing me; I was numb with cold and half-dead from the buffeting of the sea; yet his giant strength was powerful to save me then, as it had saved me before.

So when we heard once more the warning crash and thunder of the returning wave we were but a fathom distant from the rope.

'Take heart, lad,' he cried; ''tis now or never,' and as the water reached our breasts gave me a fierce shove forward with his hands.