Following out the suggestion, Eric took a long breath and went down. It was a deep dive, and he thought he saw a gleam of white below him. The boy tried to swim down a foot or two farther, but his breath failed him, and he shot up, gasping, to the surface. Not wanting to give a false alarm, yet knowing well that every second counted, the boy merely stayed long enough to get his breath, then, putting every ounce of power he possessed into a supreme effort, he went down again. This time he got a foot nearer, but not near enough to be quite sure. Again he darted up to the surface.

"Here, fellows!" he shouted.

The boat shot up beside him.

"Found him, Eric?"

"I think so, sir," the boy answered, "but he was too far down for me."

The Eel had stripped. He stood up and looked pleadingly at the lieutenant.

"Sure you're not tired?"

The Eel smiled.

"Overboard with you, then!"

He dived.

Dozens of times though Eric had seen the Eel dive, and often as he had tried to imitate him, the boy never ceased to envy his comrade his extraordinary power of going into the water without the slightest splash. Powerful dive though it was, scarcely a drop of water seemed to be displaced as the Eel went down.

During the few seconds that pa.s.sed while these sentences were being interchanged, three or four others of the life-savers had rallied to Eric's call and were headed for the boat. One man, especially, a big, burly fellow who looked as though he would be too heavy to swim, but who possessed an astounding amount of endurance and who could hold his breath longer than any one else in the station, followed the Eel to the bottom. Eric was game, and although he was beginning to feel thoroughly done up, he joined the quest in the depths of the sea.

Moonlight gives no reflections beneath the water, and the sea was dark.

The Eel was already out of sight below him, but as the boy made his way down, the powerful figure of the heavy swimmer came past him like a shadow.

A few seconds later, the Eel shot up by him, bringing an unconscious man in his grasp. The other swimmer followed. By the time Eric reached the boat he was exhausted and had to be helped in. The rescued man had been lifted into the large boat, and before the boy was even aboard, the other craft was half-way to the sh.o.r.e, racing like mad. The other boats followed.

As soon as the surf-boat touched the beach, the big man jumped out, two other members of the corps threw the unconscious figure across his shoulders for the "fireman's carry," and while the keel of the boat was still grinding on the beach, the rescued man was well on the way toward the house.

The doctor was waiting. The victim of the drowning accident, apparently dead, was put into hot blankets. His arms and legs were stiff. The lips were quite blue and the whole of the face discolored. At the sight of him, and the little slimy ooze from his lips, the doctor looked grave.

The big life-saver who had carried the sufferer in was already at work in an attempt at resuscitation.

A moment or two later, the first man who had been rescued and who was feeling a little stronger, turned over on the stretcher. He saw the swollen and discolored face of his friend and sent up a piercing cry,

"He's dead!"

Then, after a pause and a silence broken only by the rhythmic beat of the regular motions of the process of causing artificial respiration, came the cry again,

"I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save myself!"

Although the house was kept empty save for the four men, the doctor beckoned to one of the officers standing outside--so that there should be as much air as possible in the station--to come in and try to quiet the frenzied man.

"Bromides, Doctor?" queried the lieutenant, who had come in.

"Yes. Give him just one of the triple. No, that won't hurt him," he continued in answer to a look; "it's excessive stimulation that a man with smokers' heart can't stand."

The life-saver gave the required dose and succeeded in soothing the poor fellow, who was still terribly weak. The men sat on the steps outside, talking in low tones. Every one of them was keenly conscious of the strain. For twenty minutes there was no sound from within the station except the hard breathing of the man who was putting in all his strength to give the rec.u.mbent figure the motions of respiration.

"Ryan!" the doctor called suddenly.

A strapping young fellow jumped up like a shot and darted into the station to take the place of the exhausted worker. Wiping his forehead and breathing hard, the latter came out to his companions.

"Do you think there's any change, Jim?" one of them asked.

"Not so far as I can see," the other answered, shaking his head.

"How long do you suppose he was under?" queried another.

Close comparison of watches gave the actual time as between nineteen and twenty-one minutes.

"Has any one ever been saved who has been under water as long as that?"

asked Eric.

"Eighteen minutes is the longest I've ever seen," answered Johnson, the veteran of the corps, "but, of course, there's the Mooney case."

The boy listened a moment, but no sound came from the station. It was less nerve-racking to talk than to listen, so he went on,

"What was the Mooney case?"

"That was a Coast Guard job, in the days when the United States Life-Saving Service was a separate bureau. It was quite a queer case in a good many ways."

"How long was Mooney under water? Half an hour, wasn't it?" questioned another of the men.

"Thirty-one minutes, according to general reports," Johnson replied, "but to make sure that they weren't stretching it, the official report made it 'twenty minutes or over.' One of my pals worked on the man."

"How was it?" queried Eric. "In a storm?"

"Beautiful sunny Fourth of July," was the reply. "And, what's more, it was in shallow water, near sh.o.r.e, and the man could swim!"

"But how in the world--"

"That's exactly what I'm telling," Johnson continued, resenting the interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been a.s.signed to duty there.

Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near sh.o.r.e.

Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two men clinging to the sides of the skiff, he started for the scene of the accident. He was about a third of a mile away.

"What had happened was this. When the boat capsized, the swinging boom struck Mooney on the head, making him unconscious. He was swept under the sail and pinned down by it. The other two men, neither of whom could swim, managed to scramble on to the capsized skiff. They saw no sign of Mooney, and knowing that he was a swimmer, thought he had struck out for the sh.o.r.e. It wasn't until several minutes later that it occurred to one of them that their comrade might be pinned under the sail.

"With a good deal of personal risk, for his hold was insecure and he couldn't swim, this chap managed to get hold of the canvas and somehow--he said he didn't know how, himself--succeeded in getting Mooney out from under the sail. He gripped Mooney's collar, but could not lift his head above water. All that he could do was barely to hold on."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LONELY WATCHER OF THE COAST.

Courtesy of Outing Magazine.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE PATROLS MEET. THE HALF-WAY POINT.

Courtesy of Outing Magazine.]