Neither of the two gentlemen are expert swimmers—indeed so far as I can gather, Mr. Bunting in the excitement of the occasion forgot almost everything he had ever known of swimming—but they waded out valiantly one on each side of the ladder, thrust it out before them and committed themselves to the deep, in a manner casting no discredit upon our nation and race.
Yet on the whole I think it is a matter for general congratulation that they were not engaged in the rescue of a genuinely drowning person. At the time of my enquiries whatever soreness of argument that may once have obtained between them had passed, and it is fairly clear that while Fred Bunting was engaged in swimming hard against the long side of the ladder and so causing it to rotate slowly on its axis, Mr. Bunting had already swallowed a very considerable amount of sea-water and was kicking Fred in the chest with aimless vigour. This he did, as he explains, “to get my legs down, you know. Something about that ladder, you know, and they would go up!”
And then quite unexpectedly the Sea Lady appeared beside them. One lovely arm supported Mr. Bunting about the waist and the other was over the ladder. She did not appear at all pale or frightened or out of breath, Fred told me when I cross-examined him, though at the time he was too violently excited to note a detail of that sort. Indeed she smiled and spoke in an easy pleasant voice.
“Cramp,” she said, “I have cramp.” Both the men were convinced of that.
Mr. Bunting was on the point of telling her to hold tight and she would be quite safe, when a little wave went almost entirely into his mouth and reduced him to wild splutterings.
“We’ll get you in,” said Fred, or something of that sort, and so they all hung, bobbing in the water to the tune of Mr. Bunting’s trouble.
They seem to have rocked so for some time. Fred says the Sea Lady looked calm but a little puzzled and that she seemed to measure the distance shoreward. “You mean to save me?” she asked him.
He was trying to think what could be done before his father drowned. “We’re saving you now,” he said.
“You’ll take me ashore?”
As she seemed so cool he thought he would explain his plan of operations, “Trying to get—end of ladder—kick with my legs. Only a few yards out of our depth—if we could only——”