As they leaped overboard, Sam lingered.
"Come on, Sam," shouted Jack, as the boys lugged the two dripping, sputtering castaways on board.
"I--I can't swim.

You'll have to come alongside for me," stuttered the badly-scared Sam.
"All right.

Hold on, and we'll do what we can," hailed Rob, starting to carry out the risky maneuver of getting alongside the plunging hydroplane in the heavy sea.
In some never-to-be-explained manner, however, the frightened Sam suddenly lost his balance in the tossing racing boat, and, clawing desperately at her bulwarks to save himself, shot over the side.
"He'll drown!" shouted Jack Curtiss.

"He can't swim, and he'll drown." "If you knew that, why didn't you stand by him ?" truculently growled Tubby.
Without an instant's hesitation, Merritt threw off the jacket he had put on when it started to blow, and slipped off his shoes.

He was overboard and striking out for the drowning boy before those in the Flying Fish even realized his purpose.
With swift, powerful strokes he got alongside Sam just as the owner of the hydroplane was going down for the third time.
As the brave boy seized the struggling, frightened youth he felt himself gripped by the panic-stricken Sam in a frenzied hold of desperate intensity.