ved that one could be carried out of hearing so
rapidly, but before he realized it, he was thrown down into the abysmal
depths of a great sea with only a towering wall of black water to be
seen, and when he was borne up on the crest of another great roller he
saw the ship and her convoy at what seemed a great distance from him.

The vessels had seemed far apart from his viewpoint on deck, but now, so
great was his distance from them, that they seemed to form a very
compact flotilla and the hurried activities on the stricken vessel were
not visible at all.

He shouted lustily through the gathering dusk, but without result. Again
and again he called, till his head throbbed from the exertion. He could
see the smoke now, from his own vessel he thought, and he feared that
she was under way, headed back to France.

Later, when he was able to think connectedly at all, it was a matter of
wonder to him that he could have been carried so far in so short a time,
for he was not familiar with the fact known to all sailors that each
roller means a third of a mile and that a person may be carried out of
sight on the ocean in five minutes.

He could discover no sign now of the flotilla except several little
columns of smoke and he realized that the damage to the _Montauk_ could
not be serious and that they were probably making for the nearest French
port.

Tom was an expert swimmer, but this accomplishment was, of course, of no
avail now. He was nearly exhausted and his helplessness encouraged the
fatal spirit of surrender. With a desperate impulse he all but cast the
broken rail from him, resigned to struggle no more with its uncertain
buoyancy, which yielded to his weight and submerged him with every other
motion which he made.

Then he had an idea. Dragging from the wood was part of the rope network
which had been the under part of the ship's rail. It was stiff with
paint. Grasping it firmly in his mouth he managed to get his duck jacket
off and this he spread across the stiff network, floating the whole
business, jacket underneath, so that the painted rope netting acted as a
frame to hold the jacket spread out.

To his delight, he found this very buoyant, and with the strip of wood
which he lashed across it with his scarf and belt it was almost as good
as a life-preserver. He had to be careful to keep it flat upon the
water, for as soon as one edge went under the whole thing acted like the
horizontal rudders of a submarine.