Mr. Wriford lay upon this slip. He lay face downwards. His arms from his elbows were extended within the mouth of the cave. His boots were in the water. His legs, as Mr. Puddlebox thought, lay oddly twisted.
CHAPTER IV
WATER THAT SWELLS AND SUCKS
Who is so vile a coward that one weaker than himself, in worse distress, shall not arrest his cowardice? Who that has given love so lost in fear as not to love anew, amain, when out of peril his love is called? Who so base then not to lose in gladness what held his soul in dread?
First Mr. Puddlebox only stared. Water that takes your breath had taken his. Water that takes your breath rose in a thin film over the rock where on his face he lay, passed beneath his body, chilled him anew, and took his breath again. He watched it ooze from under him and spread before him: lip upwards where he faced it and ooze beneath his hands. Then gave his eyes again towards the cave.
Who is so vile a coward? Mr. Puddlebox's teeth chattered with his body's frozen chill: worse, worse, with terror of what he had escaped—God, when that sucking water sucked!—fast, faster with that worse horror he besought heaven "not after that" should overtake him. Who so vile, so base? Ah, then that piteous thing that lay before his eyes! in shape so odd, so ugly—broken? dead? Whom he had seen so wild, so eager? who child had been to him and treated as a child? Who first and only in all these years of sin had looked to him for aid, for counsel, strength? Who must have fought this filthy, cruel, silent, sucking water, and fighting it have called him, wanted him? Ah!
Who is so vile? "Loony," Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "Loony! Hey, boy!"
He only whispered. He did not dare a cry that should demand an answer—and demanding, no answer bring. "Hey, boy! Loony!" He tried to raise his voice. He dared not raise it. Anew and thicker now the water filmed the rock about him. Here was death: well, there was death—that piteous thing....
Then change! Then out of death life! Then gladness out of dread! Then joy's tumult as one beside a form beneath a sheet should see the dead loved move.
About the slipway, as he watched, he saw the swelling water, as if with sudden impulse, swell over Mr. Wriford's boots, run to his knees, and in response the prone figure move—the shoulders raise as if to drag the body: raise very feebly and very feebly drop as if the oddly twisted legs were chained.