Twenty years under the sea (1936)

THE MILLION-DOLLAR MYSTERY rope became taut and I leaned far over the side, hung on to the last inch, with Zimmerman tugging like mad. Then the strain eased. He had just caught hold of the stern of the Jules Verne, I waited, and as the vessels veered near again, I could dimly see him making his way along the deck. The anchor line he was searching for was now thumping up under our hull like a steel cable, but he let it run, and jumped back into the boiling sea. I had some fast work to do now. Before Zimmerman had left us, I had asked him to dive and loop a hawser under die menacing anchor line from the Verne, and the moment he let go o£ it, with the help of the native boy, I whipped it up on deck and made two turns and a half hitch around our own mast. I wasn't letting go of any anchor lines in that storm. Then I had time to attend to Zimmerman. He was out on the end of that line somewhere. He had boasted of being at home in the water and that night he got his chance to prove it. I rushed to his life-line which I had securely fastened, and hauling in the slack we soon brought in Zimmerman, who was thrashing away with the Australian crawl. We pulled him aboard, but he didn't realize until the next day that he had fractured two ribs on that round trip across the seething gulf that separated the two boats. Something like daylight finally arrived. Dying, the storm was almost as trying as when at its height. 213