Page:Under Dewey at Manila.djvu/181

Rh away, yet it was no easy task to secure it amid those mountainous waves. He struck out valiantly, guided by the flashes of lightning which followed. He was all but exhausted when he finally gained the article and adjusted it under his arms. With the preserver, floating was easy.

The seconds lengthened into minutes after that, and the minutes into hours, and still he floated aimlessly about, the sport of the wind and the waves. Sometimes a wave would break over, his head, almost knocking out of him the little breath that remained. The rain came down as hard as ever, but the lightning and thunder became less frequent, and finally died away altogether, leaving him to the utter blackness of the night.

It was a time never to be forgotten, a time stamped indelibly upon Larry Russell's memory, that lonely night on the China Sea, floating he knew not where, fearing that even if he kept afloat until daybreak no one would come to his rescue, but that he should continue to drift until hunger and thirst should claim him as their own. "Oh, God, help me!" he cried, not once but many times; yet only the whistling wind seemed to answer in mockery.