Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/127

Rh felt swollen and enormous, on the point of bursting wide.

Without warning expelled from those depths, he shot full half-length out of water, and fell back into the milky welter of the Assyrian's wake.

Instinctively he kept afloat with feeble strokes.

The cold was bitter, as sharp as the teeth of death; but his head was now clear, he was able to appreciate what had befallen him.

Already the Assyrian, forging onward unchecked, had left him well astern, her progress distinctly disclosed by that infernal bluish glare spouting from her after deck.

She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that great liner, the Assyrian. …

Temporarily a burning pain in his left shoulder drove all other considerations out of mind. The salt water was beginning to smart in the raw, superficial wound made by that assassin's bullet … back there in the stateroom … long ago. …

Then the cold began to bite into his marrow, and he struggled manfully to swim, taking long, slow strokes, at first comparatively powerful, by insensible degrees losing force.

Just why he took this trouble he did not know: for some dim reason it seemed desirable to live as long as possible. Withal he was aware he could not live. Whether careless or utterly ignorant of his fate, the Assyrian was trudging on and on, leaving him ever farther astern, lost beyond rescue in that weird, bleak