“What you say?” exclaimed the Frenchman, laying his hand on the collar of Ruby’s jacket.

The young sailor started, struck the Frenchman a backhanded blow on the chest, which hurled him violently against the man at the wheel, and, bending down, sprang with a wild shout into the sea.

So close had he steered to the rock, in order to lessen the danger of his reckless venture, that the privateer just weathered it.  There was not, of course, the smallest chance of recapturing Ruby.  No ordinary boat could have lived in the sea that was running at the time, even in open water, much less among the breakers of the Bell Rock.  Indeed, the crew felt certain that the English sailor had allowed despair to overcome his judgment, and that he must infallibly be dashed to pieces on the rocks, so they did not check their onward course, being too glad to escape from the immediate neighbourhood of such a dangerous spot.

Meanwhile Ruby buffeted the billows manfully.  He was fully alive to the extreme danger of the attempt, but he knew exactly what he meant to do.  He trusted to his intimate knowledge of every ledge and channel and current, and had calculated his motions to a nicety.

He knew that at the particular state of the tide at the time, and with the wind blowing as it then did, there was a slight eddy at the point of Cunningham’s Ledge.  His life, he felt, depended on his gaining that eddy.  If he should miss it, he would be dashed against Johnny Gray’s rock, or be carried beyond it and cast upon Strachan’s Ledge or Scoreby’s Point, and no man, however powerful he might be, could have survived the shock of being launched on any of these rocks.  On the other hand, if, in order to avoid these dangers, he should swim too much to windward, there was danger of his being carried on the crest of a billow and hurled upon the weather side of Cunningham’s Ledge, instead of getting into the eddy under its lee.

All this Ruby had seen and calculated when he passed the north end of the rock the first time, and he had fixed the exact spot where he should take the plunge on repassing it.  He acted so promptly that a few minutes sufficed to carry him towards the eddy, the tide being in his favour.  But when he was about to swim into it, a wave burst completely over the ledge, and, pouring down on his head, thrust him back.  He was almost stunned by the shock, but retained sufficient presence of mind to struggle on.  For a few seconds he managed to bear up against wind and tide, for he put forth his giant strength with the energy of a desperate man, but gradually he was carried away from the rock, and for the first time his heart sank within him.

Just then one of those rushes or swirls of water, which are common among rocks in such a position, swept him again forward, right into the eddy which he had struggled in vain to reach, and thrust him violently against the rock.  This back current was the precursor of a tremendous billow, which came towering on like a black moving wall.  Ruby saw it, and, twining his arm amongst the seaweed, held his breath.