Suddenly he missed from his side the small but courageous form of his comrade.
Stumpy had succumbed to the latest billow.
With a shout of "A man overboard!" he hung over the side and peered into the heaving deep.
Grasping the spar in both hands Leicester rose to his full height, and, amid a roar of warning and excitement from the crew, leaped into the sea.
The drowning man was very nearly finished by Leicester's well meant effort at rescue, for the spar just missed his head by a foot.
As it was, however, he seized it with a convulsive grasp, and the two men were once more together.
For a few moments the ship was lost to them.
They were pitched up and down, backward and forward, the rain cutting their faces, and the cold numbing their hands.
Then it was that Leicester hit upon a means of securing them to the spar.
The rope which had been fastened to his waist still hung there, and he managed, by dint of sheer force, to drag it up, and drop it over the spar once or twice, at each turn passing it round the armpit of Stumpy or himself.
By this means they were completely entangled, and in a rough fashion lashed to the long piece of wood in which all their hopes of life rested.
Dawn broke at last, and the storm subsided; but long before then they were half unconscious and wholly numbed.
When Leicester came to, he found himself lying on his back, and the weather-beaten face of Stumpy over him.
He smiled, and the man groaned back in reply; but for quite an hour no words were spoken.
At the end of that time, when they had almost recovered from the exhaustion, Leicester struggled to his feet and approached Stumpy, who was sitting, hugging his knees, at a little distance on the beach.
"Come," he said. "We are safe, thank Heaven! Cheer up! We must move on."
The man rose and looked at him, but although he nodded his head in assent he made no allusion to their late peril or made any attempt to thank his preserver.
They scrambled up the beach for some little distance, then Stumpy stopped.
"It's no use of my going any farther, sir; I can't indeed."
Leicester, fully appreciating the "sir," by which the man addressed him, stared in astonishment.
"Why not, man? We must go on! Why should you be afraid to go on? This is Ireland, you say. Do you fear anything from the people on the coast? Ah, I forgot!" he added, as the remembrance of his comrade's occupation flashed on him. "You fear the coastguard!"