“You’ll drown us all if you don’t let go!” Uttermost exertion and want of breath made Christopher’s voice wild and spasmodic. “Can’t you tread water till the boat gets to us?”
Lambert still speechlessly and convulsively dragged at her, his breath breaking from him in loud gasps, and his face working.
“Good God, he’s gone mad!” thought Christopher; “we’re all done for if he won’t let go.” In desperation he clenched his fist, with the intention of hitting Lambert on the head, but just as he gathered his forces for this extreme measure something struck him softly in the back. Lambert’s weight had twisted him round so that he was no longer facing the yacht, and he did not know how near help was. It was the boom of the Daphne that had touched him like a friendly hand, and he turned and caught at it with a feeling of more intense thankfulness than he had known in all his life.
The yacht was lying over on her side, half full of water, but kept afloat by the air-tight compartments that Mrs. Lambert’s terrors had insisted on, and that her money had paid for, when her husband had first taken to sailing on the lake. Christopher was able with a desperate effort to get one knee on to the submerged coaming of the cockpit, and catching at its upper side with his right hand, he recovered himself and prepared to draw Francie up after him.
“Come, Lambert, let go!” he said threateningly, “and help me to get her out of the water. You need not be afraid, you can hold on to the boat.”
Lambert had not hitherto tried to speak, but now with the support that the yacht gave him, his breath came back to him a little.
“Damn you!” he spluttered, the loud sobbing breaths almost choking him, “I’m not afraid! Let her go! Take your arm from round her, I can hold her better than you can. Ah!” he shrieked, suddenly seeing Francie’s face, as Christopher, without regarding what he said, drew her steadily up from his exhausted grasp, “she’s dead! you’ve let her drown!”
His head fell forward, and Christopher thought with the calm of despair, “He’s going under, and I can’t help him if he does. Here, Lambert! man alive, don’t let go! There! do you hear the launch whistling? They’re coming to us?”
Lambert’s hand, with its shining gold signet-ring, was gripping the coaming under water with a grasp that was already mechanical. It seemed to Christopher that it had a yellow, drowned look about it. He put out his foot, and, getting it under Lambert’s chin, lifted his mouth out of the water. The steam-launch was whistling incessantly, in long notes, in short ones, in jerks, and he lifted up his voice against the forces of the wind and the hissing and dashing of the water to answer her. Perhaps it was the dull weight on his arm and the stricken stillness of the face that lay in utter unconsciousness on his shoulder, but he scarcely recognised his own voice, it was broken with such a tone of stress and horror. He had never before heard such music as Hawkins’ shout hailing him in answer, nor seen a sight so heavenly fair as the bow of the Serpolette cutting its way through the thronging waves to their rescue. White faces staring over her gunwale broke into a loud cry when they saw him hanging, half-spent, against the tilted deck of the Daphne. It was well, he thought, that they had not waited any longer. The only question was whether they were not even now too late. His head swam from excitement and fatigue, his arms and knees trembled, and when at last Francie, Lambert, and finally he himself, were lifted on board the launch, it seemed the culminating point of a long and awful nightmare that Charlotte Mullen should fling herself on her knees beside the bodies of her cousin and her friend, and utter yell after yell of hysterical lamentation.