“Let him go, Major,” said Mullen, “for he will go, now that he’s said it; and he’s the most fitting, too, by odds. Charley Newell can, after all, swim like a duck, and knows these breakers from a child; I doubt if the porpoises can tumble about as safely in them as he can. I had forgotten him, or I wouldn’t have said it was so mad a thing to try to swim off. He’ll do it, if man can do it. Here come the ropes from the boat. At the worst we won’t let him drown. We can haul him in, hand over hand, at the first sign of his giving out.” The youth had, by this time, stripped himself of every article of clothing not absolutely necessary, and now stood before the group the model of a modern Hercules. Major Gordon, as he looked at the brawny arms, and the volume of muscle knotted on the ample chest, could not but acknowledge that his opponent, even without his greater skill in the surf, would be able to contend twice as long in the waters as himself, from sheer superiority of muscle. He, therefore, ceased to object to the substitution. What would have been duty, if no other person had volunteered, became fool-hardiness when a more suitable one offered. “Go, then,” he said, fervently clasping the youth’s hand, “and God be with you. I shall not forget your heroism.” “I’ll do it, if it’s in the sinoos of a man,” said he, returning the grasp, till the Major’s fingers crunched as if in a vice. And measuring the distance between the beach and the wreck with his eye, he continued— “Many’s the time I’ve swum ten times as far for fun, and though never in quite such a surf, yet often in one a’most as bad.” By this time his comrades were engaged in fixing one end of the rope around his waist. He felt of it, to see that it held firm, and hitching himself up, he said, with an attempt at jocularity not unusual at such times with men of his class— “It’s rather a long tail for a man to go to sea with, and beat’s a Chinaman’s dead hollow; but I guess a fellow can manage it. So here goes.” As he spoke, he ran gayly down into the undertow. For an instant, his comrades looked upon him in silence, but when he turned, on the very edge of the surf, to wave a last farewell, they broke simultaneously into a cheer. The youth did not wait till the huzza subsided, but, watching his opportunity, plunged into a wave that was just then about to break, and while the tons of water, overwhelming him, rushed roaring and churning up the sands, vanished from sight. For what seemed an age, the spectators watched and waited, in vain, for his reappearance. “He is gone already,” said Major Gordon, drawing a deep breath, after this interval. “No, there he is. He comes up buoyant as a cork. See how he takes that second roller!”