But now the young skipper of the “Farnum” was plainly exhausted.

Freed of the need of more immediate work, Jack, as soon as he was free, rolled over on his back, floating.

In the meantime, four other midshipmen swam close to where the girl’s athletic brother had been seen to go down.  He came up, at last, more than half gone, but the middies pounced upon him—­and then he was safe.

Hal was at the wheel, now, with Williamson and the naval machinist below in the engine room.  That gave Eph Somers a chance to spring out on the platform deck with Ensign Trahern and the sole remaining midshipman.

“I’d better run along, now, to pick ’em up, sir, hadn’t I?” called Eph Somers to the naval officer.

“By all means, Mr. Somers.”

The steamship’s boat, too, pulled by a strong, well-trained crew, was now getting close to the scene.  So it came about that the liner’s lifeboat picked up Jack, the girl and her brother.  The middies, disdaining any such outside interference, calmly turned and made for the “Farnum.”

The girl proved to be unconscious, the brother more than half-dazed.

“Bring them aboard,” directed Mr. Trahern, briefly.

“Now, gentlemen, you’ve a chance to apply what you may know about first aid to the drowning,” suggested Ensign Trahern, tersely.

Under that vigorous treatment Walter Carruthers, as the young man afterwards declared himself to be, was quickly brought around.  The middies had much harder work in reviving the girl.  Her brother sat by watching the work.

“Elsie isn’t—­isn’t dead, is she?” asked the brother, anxiously.

“Oh, no,” replied one of the midshipmen, suspending his rescue work for an instant.  “In fact, if there were women here to do the work—­loosening her corsets, and all that sort of thing, you know—­Miss Carruthers would be sitting up in short time.”

At last, the girl was made to open her eyes.  She swallowed a little coffee, too.

The “Greytown,” in the meantime, had manoeuvered as close as was safe for such a big craft to come.  The ship’s doctor put off in a lifeboat, and soon declared his patient fit to be removed to the liner.

While all this was going on, Jack had slipped quietly below.  He took a brisk rub-down, donned dry clothing, and speedily appeared on deck, looking as though nothing had happened.

“Drink some of this,” ordered Eph, holding a pint cup of coffee toward the young skipper.  Jack finished it all in a few gulps.  Then, as his blood warmed, he began to smile over his late adventure.

Supported on the arm of the ship’s doctor, Elsie Carruthers turned to ask: 

“Where is the midshipman who first reached me—­the—­the one I so nearly drowned.  I—­I want to thank him, oh, so heartily, and to apologize.”

“Here he is,” cried Ensign Trahern, shoving Benson forward.

“But I’m not a midshipman, nor anything else in the Navy—­no such luck,” laughed Jack.