A hand was thrown up before me, the glinting fingers gripping at empty air.

I caught the hand, swimming strongly with the current, for so the man could not clutch at me, and if a drowning man can be held apart, it is no great skill to save him.

In this art I was not unlearned, and once had even saved two men from a wrecked barque in the long surf of St.Andrews Bay.

Save for a blow from some great floating timber, I deemed that I had little to fear; nay, now I felt sure of the Maid's praise and of a rich ransom.
A horn of bank with alder bushes ran out into the stream, a smooth eddy or backwater curling within.

I caught a bough of alder, and, though nigh carried down by the drowning man's weight, I found bottom, yet hardly, and drew my man within the backwater.