Those four strong-backed, supple oarsmen bent to their sweeps as if they meant to split them. Far off, on their lee, they could see the bluish flame of the chemical buoy, now rising into view on the crest of a comber and now sinking out of sight in the dark trough of the turbulent seas. It was impossible to tell if there were a man clinging to it or not. Bending forward, the middy scanned the wilderness of tumbling waters eagerly, while the oarsmen steadily struggled against the big seas down toward the lambent flame. Time and again it seemed as if one of the immense waves must crash down into the boat and overwhelm her. But the navy craft are built for just such work, and the boat kept comparatively dry amid the tempest. “Hooray, boys!” came a sudden shout from the middy in the stern, “I see him!” The temptation was strong upon the oarsmen to turn their heads and look, but they knew that such an action might result in the swamping of the boat, and kept steadily at their work. All at once a blinding glare of light enveloped them, and then swept on. It was the destroyer’s searchlight. “Woof!” exclaimed Herc, “I never knew those seas were so big till that light showed them up.” Viewed in the bright electric bath of the searchlight, the waves did, indeed, look formidable. Black and huge, they reared up on every side of the tiny boat. Their tops were torn off by the furious wind in sheets of ragged foam. The spume thus formed drenched the boat in clouds. Suddenly the middy at the stern oar swung the boat right around to port and, hauling his oar inboard, rapidly crawled forward. “I see him, boys,” he shouted, grasping a line and leaning far out over the bow. “Stand by for orders.” “Peak oars!” Round came the boat’s head, the faces of its occupants now flooded with light from the destroyer’s searchlight. “All right, my man, I’ve got you!” exclaimed the young officer, as he reached overboard for the patent buoy, to which hung a bedraggled, almost exhausted figure. But at the same instant he uttered a shout of alarm, and before the horrified eyes of his startled crew he lost his balance and toppled over the bow into the raging sea. “He’ll sink like a shot in those rubber boots!” yelled Stanley. “Thank goodness, he kicked ’em off before he went forward,” cried Ned, who was at the stroke oar. But even without the boots, the young officer was in dire peril. As he was swept past the buoy he made a frantic grab for it, but his fingers closed on the air. The contrivance, already burdened, was swept from his reach. Ned never forgot that face as the middy was carried by. In the glare of the searchlight every man in the boat could see his distressed features as plainly as if he had been performing on a lighted stage. Suddenly Ned gave a shout. As a matter of fact, his outcry was simultaneous with the sweeping past the boat of the struggling young officer. “You fellows keep her head to the seas!” he shouted above the voices of the gale.