The Africa is rolling.

“Here goes!” It is now or never.

Corkey has short, tough fingers.  He grasps that rope like a vise.  He wraps his left leg well in the coils.  He kicks the steamer with his right.  The small boat does not touch the water when the steamer is sitting straight in the sea.

It is a horrible turmoil in which to enter.  Perhaps he came down too soon!

“I wish I had some one with me now.  Mebbe the two of us would get an advantage.”

The second mate looks over the gunwale from the prow of the steamer.  He knows a land-lubber is handling a yawl.

“D——­ fool!” he mutters.

In the Georgian Bay, if the ship go down, all hands are to drown.  Only sham sailors like Corkey are to make any effort, beyond fastening pieces of wood about their waists.

“I wonder if I’d come out here for this if I’d got onto it?” Then the grim features relax.  “I wonder if his nobs would?”

Corkey’s feet rest on the prow of the small boat.  He asks if he fastened that rope securely at the cleat.  He has asked that all the way down.  Perhaps the steamer is not going to sink.

“Whoopy!”

Corkey is under the steamer’s side, deep in the waves.  He goes down suddenly, cold, frightened, benumbed.  He feels that some one is trying to pull the rope out of his hands.  It must be Lockwin.  The drowning man clutches with a hundred forces.  The tug increases.  The struggling man will lose the rope.  Lockwin is striking Corkey with a bludgeon.  That is unfair!  There is a last pull, and Corkey comes up out of the waves.

What has happened?  The Africa has rolled nearly over, but is righting.

Corkey’s wits return.  “I’ve lost my knife!” he cries, in bitter disappointment.  But, lo! his knife is in his hands.  He can with difficulty unloose his fingers from the rope.

The Africa is listing upon him again.  He dreads that abyss of waters.  He cuts the rope far above him and he falls in the sea, the entire scope of his life passing in a red fire before his eyes.

Beside, there is a drowning thought that he has gone out to die before the rest.  At the last, when he swung out as the Africa rolled toward him he wanted to climb back.

Now the red fire is gone and Corkey can think.  He believes he is drowning.  “It’s because I wasn’t a real sailor,” he argues.  “The sailors knew better.”

Something pulls him.  It is the rope which he holds.  He knows now that he has a yawl on the end of that line.  He pulls and pulls—­and comes up to the air, a choking, sneezing, exceedingly active human being.  The yawl is riding the water.  He rolls into the boat at the prow.  He feels quickly for the oars and finds two that are in their locks.  Water is deep in the bottom.  There is nothing to bail with.

But the joy of the little man is keen.  “I’m saved!  That’s what I am!  I’m saved!”