A life of agony passed in a few minutes.

He rose and fell like a cork on the buoyant waves--rose and fell, and
saw nothing but the ship's lights, now terribly distant.

But at last, as he rose and fell, he caught a few fitful glimpses of a
smaller light rising and falling like himself. "A boat!" he cried, and
raising himself as high as he could, shouted, cried, implored for help.
He stretched his hands across the water. "This way! this way!"

The light kept moving, but it came no nearer. They had greatly
underrated the drift. The other boat had no light.

Minutes passed of suspense, hope, doubt, dismay, terror. Those minutes
seemed hours.

In the agony of suspense the quaking heart sent beads of sweat to the
brow, though the body was immersed.

And the gloom deepened, and the cold waves flung him up to heaven with
their giant arms, and then down again to hell: and still that light, his
only hope, was several hundred yards from him.

Only for a moment at a time could his eyeballs, straining with agony,
catch this will-o'-the-wisp, the boat's light. It groped the sea up and
down, but came no near.

When what seemed days of agony had passed, suddenly a rocket rose in the
horizon--so it seemed to him.