“Save yourself! if you are worth it!” was the savage reply.
The drowning, despairing man's head was sinking again, his strength exhausted by his idle struggles, when suddenly on his left hand he saw a round piece of rock scarce a yard from him. He made a desperate effort and got his hand on it. Alas! it was so slimy he could not hold by it; he fell off it into the water; he struggled up again, tried to dig his feet into the rock, but, after a convulsive fling of a few seconds, fell back—the slimy rock mocked his grasp. He came up again and clung, and cried piteously for help and mercy. There was none!—but a grim silence and looks of horrible curiosity at his idle struggles. His crime had struck at the very root of their hearts and lives. Then this poor, cowardly wretch made up his mind that he must die. He gave up praying to the pitiless, who could look down and laugh at his death-agony, and he cried upon the absent only. “My children! my wife! my poor Jenny!” and with this he shut his eyes, and, struggling no more, sank quietly down! down! down. First his shoulders disappeared, then his chin, then his eyes, and then his hair. Who can fathom human nature? that sad, despairing cry, which was not addressed to them, knocked at the bosoms that all his prayers to them for pity had never touched. A hasty, low and uneasy murmur followed it almost as a report follows a flash.
“His wife and children!” cried several voices with surprise; but there were two men this cry not only touched, but pierced—the plaintiff and the judge.
“The man has got a wife and children,” cried Jem in dismay, as he tried to descend the rock by means of some diminutive steps. “They never offended me—he is gone down, —— me if I see the man drowned like a rat—Hallo!—Splash!”
Jem's foot had slipped, and, as he felt he must go, he jumped right out, and fell twenty feet into the water.
At this the crowd roared with laughter, and now was the first shade of good-nature mixed with the guffaw. Jem fell so near Walker that on coming up he clutched the drowning man's head and dragged him up once more from death. At the sight of Walker's face above water again, what did the crowd, think you?
They burst into a loud hurrah! and cheered Jem till the echoes rang again.
“Hurrah! Bravo! Hurrah!” pealed the fickle crowd.
Now Walker no sooner felt himself clutched than he clutched in return with the deadly grasp of a drowning man. Jem struggled to get free in vain. Walker could not hear or see, he was past all that; but he could cling, and he got Jem round the arms and pinned them. After a few convulsive efforts Jem gave a loud groan. He then said quietly to the spectators, “He will drown me in another half minute.” But at this critical moment out came from the other extremity of the pool Judge Lynch, swimming with a long rope in his hand; one end of this rope he had made into a bight ere he took the water. He swam behind Walker and Jem, whipped the noose over their heads and tightened it under their shoulders. “Haul!” cried he to Ede, who held the other end of the rope. Ede hauled, and down went the two heads.
A groan of terror and pity from the mob—their feelings were reversed.