"Nothing to worry about," spluttered Preston, as the two bobbed like corks in the quartering wave. "We'll be picked up all right. My aunt! Look at them! Well, they might have chucked them on our heads."
He referred to the injudicious volley of lifebuoys. Although the ship was carrying way the passengers were still engaged in dumping the Company's property into the sea.
His companion laughed. Regaining his breath he was also regaining his boisterous spirits, although he had to admit that the struggle, followed by a thirty-odd foot fall had severely taxed his splendid brawn and muscle.
"You don't look in your element, Preston," he remarked, "even though you are Father Neptune."
"Was," corrected the absentee Acting Chief Officer, proceeding to relieve himself of the encumbrance of his scanty garb of trailing seaweed and oyster-shells. "Come on; we may as well strike out for the nearest of that line of lifebuoys. Breast stroke. There's no great hurry, and it's less tiring."
Although the passenger had gone overboard wearing boxing-gloves, that had remained on his hands despite his wrestling bout, one had disappeared during his submergence. Preston remarked on it.
"Yes," rejoined the other. "Might just as well hang on to this one, although one's not much use. Cost me a couple of Bradbury's just before we left England. I say, do you mind telling me this: I declare I've crossed the Line without being initiated. Is that so?"
"It is," replied Preston feelingly. "If you'd gone through the thing tamely we wouldn't have been in the ditch. Why did you ask me?"
By this time both men had swum to the nearest of the far-flung line of lifebuoys, and, glad of the support, were hanging on lightly at opposite sides of the buoyant "Kisbie".
"'Cause I want corroboration. Last night Murgatroyd bet me a tenner I wouldn't escape it. Have I won?"
"Right-o, Preston!" was the delighted response. "I'll stand you a dinner in the swankiest hotel in Adderley Street as soon as we arrive at Cape Town. That's a deal. Hello! They're lowering a boat. What are you looking at?"
The Acting Chief Officer had seen the boat being swung out, and was calculating how long it would take to reach the spot where the lifebuoy was--calculating whether the boat's crew would find only an unoccupied lifebuoy floating in a patch of blood-stained sea--for less than fifty yards away was the black, triangular dorsal fin of an enormous shark.