Contos looking back from his boat, and heard the vindictive and
mocking tones of his voice as he shouted exultantly. He held
steadily on his course, leaving me to perish.

There was nothing to do but to swim for it, which, in that wild
confusion, was at the best a matter of but a few moments. Holding
my breath and working with my hands, I managed to get off my heavy
sea-boots and my jacket. Yet there was very little breath I could
catch to hold, and I swiftly discovered that it was not so much a
matter of swimming as of breathing.

I was beaten and buffeted, smashed under by the great San Pablo
whitecaps, and strangled by the hollow tide-rip waves which flung
themselves into my eyes, nose, and mouth. Then the strange sucks
would grip my legs and drag me under, to spout me up in some fierce
boiling, where, even as I tried to catch my breath, a great
whitecap would crash down upon my head.

It was impossible to survive any length of time. I was breathing
more water than air, and drowning all the time. My senses began to
leave me, my head to whirl around. I struggled on, spasmodically,
instinctively, and was barely half conscious when I felt myself
caught by the shoulders and hauled over the gunwale of a boat.

For some time I lay across a seat where I had been flung, face
downward, and with the water running out of my mouth. After a
while, still weak and faint, I turned around to see who was my
rescuer. And there, in the stern, sheet in one hand and tiller in
the other, grinning and nodding good-naturedly, sat Demetrios
Contos. He had intended to leave me to drown,--he said so