Jerry was in bad shape.  Not accustomed to swimming, strangled by the salt water that lapped into his open mouth, he was getting loggy when first he chanced to see the flash of the captain’s torch.  This, however, he did not connect with Skipper, and so took no more notice of it than he did of the first stars showing in the sky.  It never entered his mind that it might be a star nor even that it might not be a star.  He continued to wail and to strangle with more salt water.  But when he at length heard Skipper’s voice he went immediately wild.  He attempted to stand up and to rest his forepaws on Skipper’s voice coming out of the darkness, as he would have rested his forepaws on Skipper’s leg had he been near.  The result was disastrous.  Out of the horizontal, he sank down and under, coming up with a new spasm of strangling.

This lasted for a short time, during which the strangling prevented him from answering Skipper’s cry, which continued to reach him.  But when he could answer he burst forth in a joyous yelp.  Skipper was coming to take him out of the stinging, biting sea that blinded his eyes and hurt him to breathe.  Skipper was truly a god, his god, with a god’s power to save.

Soon he heard the rhythmic clack of the oars on the thole-pins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper’s voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by objurgations to the rowers.

“All right, Jerry, old man.  All right, Jerry.  All right.—­Washee-washee, you fella boy!—­Coming, Jerry, coming.  Stick it out, old man.  Stay with it.—­Washee-washee like hell!—­Here we are, Jerry.  Stay with it.  Hang on, old boy, we’ll get you.—­Easy . . . easy.  ’Vast washee.”

And then, with amazing abruptness, Jerry saw the whaleboat dimly emerge from the gloom close upon him, was blinded by the stab of the torch full in his eyes, and, even as he yelped his joy, felt and recognized Skipper’s hand clutching him by the slack of the neck and lifting him into the air.

He landed wet and soppily against Skipper’s rain-wet chest, his tail bobbing frantically against Skipper’s containing arm, his body wriggling, his tongue dabbing madly all over Skipper’s chin and mouth and cheeks and nose.  And Skipper did not know that he was himself wet, and that he was in the first shock of recurrent malaria precipitated by the wet and the excitement.  He knew only that the puppy-dog, given him only the previous morning, was safe back in his arms.

While the boat’s crew bent to the oars, he steered with the sweep between his arm and his side in order that he might hold Jerry with the other arm.

“You little son of a gun,” he crooned, and continued to croon, over and over.  “You little son of a gun.”

And Jerry responded with tongue-kisses, whimpering and crying as is the way of lost children immediately after they are found.  Also, he shivered violently.  But it was not from the cold.  Rather was it due to his over-strung, sensitive nerves.