There was likely to be little ice out there, and the northwest wind had knocked the sea flat, as Dan knew would be the case when he figured his chances at the start.  It was bad enough though, for there was certain to be something of a swell—­and other things; and now that he was in the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen.  But his strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his first big act of self-sacrifice.  The song the Salvation woman sang passed through his mind.

  “Gawd is mighty and grateful;
    No act of my brother’s or mine
  Escapes His understandin’,
    In the good old Christmas time.”

“As soon as we get near the Kentigern,” he said, “we’ll cut loose from the Quinn, and while she is warping alongside we’ll make a dash, and you can hail ’em and get ’em to lower a ladder.  You can beat Skelly that way.  That’s what I’m banking on.”

“You just put me alongside and I’ll see to the rest,” replied the Captain impatiently.  He would have attempted to scale the steel sides of the vessel themselves, if only to escape from that little boat, tailing astern of the Quinn in the heart of the darkness, rooting, twisting, threatening to dive under the water.

“What are you goin’ to do after I get aboard?” asked Captain Barney, rubbing his hands as though the victory were already won.  “I declare, I never thought of you!  You can’t row back.”

Dan raised his head angrily and started to utter a sneering reply, when the first good swell caught the boat—­a great lazy, greasy fellow.  The Quinn went up and then down, and after her shot the rowboat, like a young colt frisking at the end of her tether, then careening down the incline on her side as though to ram the stern of the tug ahead, which, fortunately, was climbing another hill.

What the rowboat had been through before was child’s play to this, and Dan’s face grew very stern.  Reaching down with one hand, he seized the other oar and shoved it along to Captain Barney.  “Put that down on the port side.  Hang on for your life and keep her steady!” he cried.

Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney struggled in the bow.  It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul of whoever could have seen it.  But that is always the way in the bravest, most hopeless fights—­no one ever sees them.  They are fought alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to make a modest tale of it around a winter’s fire; but more often the sequel is, “Found drowned”—­if even that.

Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly.  They were on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was all about.  There was not even the impression of distance; the swells arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease, let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.