In a second Ethel had slipped off her skirt and her shoes and was running into the water in her bloomers. It could not be very deep where Dicky was, just beyond the tip of the point. The sedge grass must have thrown him down when he started to wade. How it happened flashed into Ethel's mind as clearly as if she had seen it and all the time she was wading out as fast as she could go. Even now it was only a trifle above her knees; if Dicky could only get his footing he would be all right—and as she thought it, her own feet slipped from under her and she fell down a steep under-water bank sloping sharply away from the point.
This was the reason then. But though startled she was cool and fell at once into an easy swimming stroke. Her middy blouse hampered her but not seriously. It needed only a few strokes to reach the eddy made by Dicky's struggle. She could see him clearly and she seized him by the back of his rompers. He made no resistance, poor little man. All the struggle had gone out of him when she lifted him to the surface.
The point was nearer than the beach and a few strokes brought her to it with her limp burden. The child was a slender little chap but he was a heavy armful for a girl of thirteen and Ethel tugged herself out of breath before she brought him high up on dry land.
"What was the first thing Roger said?" she asked herself, and instantly remembered that she must turn Dicky on to his face to let the water run out of his throat. She bent his limp arm under his forehead and then left him for a second while she ran for her skirt to roll up under his chest. As she ran she tried to scream, but only a faint squeak came from her lips.
As she flew back she rolled the skirt into a bundle. The child still showed no signs of breathing and she copied Roger's next move on that long ago day when she had been his subject. Thrusting the roll under Dicky's chest to raise his body from the ground and then kneeling beside him she pulled him on to his side and then let him fall forward again on to his face, counting "one, two, three, four," slowly for each motion.
Her arms ached cruelly as she tugged and tugged again at Dicky's little rolling body. Wouldn't anybody ever come? Over and over she tried to scream, but she had only breath enough to keep on pulling. She was counting "One, two, three, four," silently now.
At last, at last, came a flicker of Dicky's eyelid and a whimper from his mouth. Ethel worked on harder and harder. Dicky grew heavier and heavier, but she saw dimly through her own half-shut eyes that he was opening his and that his face was puckering for one of the yells that only Dicky Morton could give.
"You let me alone, Ethel Blue," he whispered savagely, and then she lost sight of the water and the sedge grass and her weary arms fell at her sides.
When she opened her eyes again she found a heavy coat thrown around her and a face that she had not seen for a very long time, smiling down into hers—a face that she never forgot, the face that flashed before her every night when she said her prayers.
"My little girl!" Captain Morton was saying soothingly as he rocked her in his arms; "my brave little girl!"