After that she had not long to wait.  In four minutes the runabout was within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a machine gun.  And then the very thing she expected and dreaded came about.  Every moment she expected to see him drive bows under and go down.  Here and there at intervals uplifted a comber taller than its fellows, standing, just as it broke, like a green wall.  Into one such hoary-headed sea the white boat now drove like a lance.  Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade, saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch and smash the low windshield.  She heard the glass crack.  Immediately the roaring exhausts died.  Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she had taken.

The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth.

“Can you hang on a while longer?” he shouted.  “Till I can get my boat bailed?”

“I’m all right,” she called back.

She saw him heave up the engine hatch.  For a minute or two he bailed rapidly.  Then he spun the engine, without result.  He straightened up at last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his coat.

The launch lay heavily in the trough.  The canoe, rising and clinging on the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet at a time, taking the run of the sea faster than the disabled motorboat.  So now only a hundred-odd feet separated them, but they could come no nearer, for the canoe was abeam and slowly drifting past.

Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his hand.  Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged overboard in a beautiful, arching dive.  A second later his head showed glistening above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand stroke.  It seemed an age—­although the actual time was brief enough—­before he reached her.  She saw then that there was method in his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the launch.  He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, smiling broadly at her.

“Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission,” he said at last.  “I’d have had you ashore by now.  Hang on for a minute.”

He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow.  Holding fast with one hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch.  In that continuous roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they managed it, and presently she sat shivering in the cockpit, watching the man spill the water out of the Peterboro till it rode buoyantly again.  Then he went to work at his engine methodically, wiping dry the ignition terminals, all the various connections where moisture could effect a short circuit.  At the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank.  The multiple cylinders fired with a roar.

He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering gear stood.