The Irishman shook his head.
"There's nothin' yet, but he moight come round anny minute," was his reply, with the invincible optimism of his race.
Eric had been thinking of Murchison's description of drowning.
"Why did they roll half-drowned people on a barrel in the old times?" he asked.
"Sure, they were ijits," Ryan answered cheerfully.
"But what was the idea? To get the water out?"
"Just that. They used to think the lungs were a tank."
"Murchison was saying that people drowned because they couldn't get oxygen. Isn't there oxygen in water?"
"Av coorse there is," the Irishman replied. "But ye've got to have the gills of a fish to use it. Annyhow, a man's got warm blood an' a fish has cold. It takes a lot of oxygen to get a man's blood warm. An' if he doesn't get it, he dies.
"Ye see, Eric," he continued, "that's why ye've got to go on workin' over a drowned man. Ye can't tell how badly he's poisoned. An' it's honest I am in tellin' ye that I think we've got a chance in there."