Billy was waiting to see if the mate would
revive sufficiently to return across the deck before the next
wave swept the ship. It was very interesting--he wondered
what odds O'Leary would have laid against the man.
In another moment the wave would come. Billy glanced at
the open cabin hatch. That would never do--the cabin would
be flooded with tons of water should the next wave find the
hatch still open. Billy closed it. Then he looked again toward
Theriere. The man was just recovering consciousness--and the
wave was coming.
Something stirred within Billy Byrne. It gripped him and
made him act quickly as though by instinct to do something
that no one, Billy himself least of all, would have suspected
that the Grand Avenue mucker would have been capable of.
Across the deck Theriere was dragging himself painfully to
his hands and knees, as though to attempt the impossible feat
of crawling back to the cabin hatch. The wave was almost
upon Billy. In a moment it would engulf him, and then rush
on across him to tear Theriere from the deck and hurl him
beyond the ship into the tumbling, watery, chaos of the sea.
The mucker saw all this, and in the instant he launched
himself toward the man for whom he had no use, whose kind
he hated, reaching him as the great wave broke over them,
crushing them to the deck, choking and blinding them.
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