Maybe they did not consider how a man who is trying to win his home again from captivity is likely to do more than his best.

At all events, I had never so much as tried a swim like that before, nor do I think that I could compass it again.
Presently, when the turn of the tide brought with it no eddy into the bay which set me homeward, Thorleif would let me go no longer, and followed me in the boat with two men; which was easy enough, for I swam between the ship and the place where the red glow of burning Weymouth still shone in the northern sky.

He could not leave me to drown.
For a time, in the growing dusk, he could not find me.

Then the sea fires showed me black against their glow, and the sea tempted him, and he leaped in after me, singing to cheer me, for it was plain that I was nearly spent.

When he brought me up from the depth again I had little of the drowned man about me, for I had fainted.