"Insolent fellow!" she exclaims, her eyes ablaze with anger. "Keep your hands off my boat! I command you!"
"But I ain't to be c'mmanded, ye minx. Not till I've had a smack o' them lips; an' by G-- I s'll have it."
Saying which he reaches out to the full stretch of his long, ape-like arms, and with one hand succeeds in grasping the boat's gunwale, while with the other he gets hold of the lady's dress, and commences dragging her towards him.
Gwen Wynn neither screams, nor calls "Help!" She knows it is near.
"Hands off!" cries a voice in a volume of thunder, simultaneous with a dull thud against the side of the larger boat, followed by a continued crashing as her gunwale goes in. The roughs, facing round, for the first time see the fishing skiff, and know why it is there. But they are too far gone in drink to heed or submit--at least their leader seems determined to resist. Turning savagely on Ryecroft, he stammers out--
"Hic--ic--who the blazes be you, Mr. White Cap? An' what d'ye want wi' me?"
At the words he bounds from his own boat into the other; and, before the fellow can raise an arm, those of Ryecroft are around him in tight hug. In another minute the hulking scoundrel is hoisted from his feet, as though but a feather's weight, and flung overboard.
[Illustration: IN ANOTHER MINUTE THE HULKING SCOUNDREL IS FLUNG OVERBOARD.]
Wingate has meanwhile also boarded, grappled on to the other on foot, and is threatening to serve him the same.
A plunge, with a wild cry--the man going down like a stone; another, as he comes up among his own bubbles; and a third, yet wilder, as he feels himself sinking for the second time!
The two at the oars, scared into a sort of sobriety, one of them cries out--
"Lor' o' mercy! Rob'll be drownded! He can't sweem a stroke."
It is true. For Rob has again come to the surface, and shouts with feebler voice, while his arms tossed frantically about tell of his being in the last throes of suffocation!
Ryecroft looks regretful--rather alarmed. In chastising the fellow he had gone too far. He must save him!
Quick as the thought off goes his coat, with his boots kicked into the bottom of the boat; then himself over its side!
A splendid swimmer, with a few bold sweeps he is by the side of the drowning man. Not a moment too soon--just as the latter is going down for the third, likely the last time. With the hand of the officer grasping his collar, he is kept above water. But not yet saved. Both are now imperilled--the rescuer and he he would rescue. For, far from the boats, they have drifted into a dangerous eddy, and are being whirled rapidly round!