Look out!" roared Dan, "there's a boat here!"

It saved him; for a bell clanged in the engine-room, and the tug began
to make sternway. It saved him for but a minute, though.

Thoughtless, selfish, and for once an utter fool, the exultant skipper
of the _Three Sisters_ sought to gloat over his rival.

"On board the _Quinn_," yelled Barney. "Say, Jim Skelly, this is
Barney Hodge talkin'. You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat
business, did you?"

A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for
anything else. Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all
his strength to his oars. He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug
started right for him.

"Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman. But not a word
came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some
black, implacable monster.

Suddenly Dan cast aside his oars and dived over the side. The next
instant the sharp, copper-bound nose of the tug struck the rowboat
fairly amidships, grinding it against the steel side of the freighter,
crushing it into matchwood.

A great numbness passed over the man. He was dazed; and as wave after
wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder.
Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of
energy and vitality passed through his body.

He saw that he had been carried to about amidships, and the ladder was
well toward the bow. With lusty strokes he struck out along the steel
sides, rising over the waves like a duck. Five minutes elapsed, and
then with a sudden fear, Dan realized, in glancing at the bow, that he
had not made ten feet in all that time and effort.

It was the current, which was ripping along the hull at the rate that
would have affected the speed of a powerful steam launch. Dan had not
noticed it before. He struggled desperately, but to no avail, and then
he uttered his first cry for help. He could not see the deck, being so
close to the hull; and for the same reason he could not have been seen
had his cry been heard. Again he called for assistance, but there was
no answer, no sound, save that of the water buffeting past the vessel.

He ceased to waste his strength in fruitless cries, devoting all that
remained to his struggle to reach the ladder. But his strokes were
weaker than before and he found he was being carried back upon the
current instead of making headway against it. Fight as he would, he