Tom Slade Picks a Winner

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

What he set out to do, he would do though all the world of boys cast stones at him and the earth fell away beneath his feet. What he set out to do, he would do. And stricken here in the darkness, amid the angry elements, he kept his line of communication with actual things open by the sheer power of his will. There was a moment—just a moment—when he thought the slimy points of rock across which he lay were an airplane and that he was being borne upon its mounting wings. But he shook off this demon tempting him into oblivion and kept his senses.

He felt very weak and giddy, the hand of his wounded arm tingled as if it were asleep, his elbow seemed to have lost its pliancy and his whole forearm throbbed, throbbed, throbbed.

With his sound arm he swept the neighboring water in a gesture of petulance, the petulance of pain, that gesture of despair and impatience seen in hospitals when an impatient arm is raised and dropped idly on the bed-clothes. But Wilfred’s arm fell upon something else—a human form.

The startling discovery acted, for the moment, like a potent drug. He rolled over and, bracing his feet among the crevices in the rock, moved his hand across a ghastly upturned face with streaking hair plastered over it. Here, then, was the delinquent who had taken the launch contrary to rules and gone forth in it challenging these boisterous elements. The face was not recognizable as any that Wilfred had ever seen. It might have been Hervey Willetts; Hervey had never bothered much with Wandering Willie Cowyard.

The importance of knowing the full truth gave Wilfred the strength to ascertain it. He had never felt a pulse. But he had lain and stood patiently while doctors had listened at his back and at his chest as if these parts of his body were keyholes. He knew, if anybody did, how to find out if a heart were beating; he was a postgraduate in this.

So there upon that lonely, wind-swept clump of rock, he laid his ear against the chest of the drenched, unconscious figure, and listened. He moved his head in quest of the right spot. Again he moved it but no answering throb was there to relieve the fearful panting of his own anxious heart. The wind moaned on the mountaintop and swept the black lake and lashed it into fury. Somewhere on the troubled waters voices could be heard—voices on the raft that had been borne off its course; and now in the complete darkness its baffled crew knew not where to steer. Far off on shore were the lights of camp, and tiny lamps moving about—lanterns carried by scouts in oilskins.

Then it was granted to Wilfred Cowell to learn something; not all, but something. The heart of that unconscious form was beating.

How can I say that Wilfred chose wisely not to call aloud and guide the all but frenzied searchers to this perilous refuge? Perhaps some silent voice told him that this was his job and his alone. Perhaps, being himself half-frenzied with pain, he knew not what he did.

“I—I came,” he murmured in his weakness, “and I’ll—we’ll—swim—go back—findings is—is—is—keepings.”

How do I know where people get the strength to do sublime things—or the reasons. Perhaps every scurrilous word and look askance that he had known at camp came to his aid now and made him strong. Perhaps Wandering Willie and even Wilfraid Coward helped him; who shall say? Or perhaps his boyish utterance there in that lonely darkness, that findings is keepings, was in some way a support. This limp, unconscious form belonged to him—it was his!