The last words were spoken in mid-air, for Toby’s gleaming body was plunging outward and downward in a long shallow dive. The fraction of a second later, Frank, too, clove the green water.
CHAPTER XX
A CLOSE CALL
“Talk about your ice-water,” said Arnold to himself, as he paddled slowly along on his back. “This has it beat a mile. I guess I stood around on the launch too long and got chilled.”
He rolled over and threw an anxious look at the far-distant island, and then, after a brief moment of indecision, turned back toward the launch.
“It’s too cold for me,” he murmured. “I’m going to beat it!”
For a few dozen strokes he managed to fight off the numbness that had seized on his limbs. His teeth chattered unless he held them tightly shut and a fear began to clutch at his rapidly beating heart. He had never felt just like this in the water, never felt so numb and weak. He recalled stories he had heard of folks who had been seized with cramp and had drowned before help could reach them, and fear became panic. He forgot all skill and science and thrashed arms and legs wildly in the endeavor to reach the launch, a good hundred yards away. Of course he got his head under water and swallowed more than was pleasant, and of course he made little progress. A sudden swift, sharp pain in one thigh brought a cry from him. It seemed to pull the muscles taut, and, in obedience, his left leg doubled up helplessly.
Strangely enough, the sudden knowledge that what he had feared had actually come to pass calmed him. Instead of the unreasoning panic, a grim determination to fight took possession of him. The pain was intolerable if he so much as moved that up-bent leg, but fortunately one could swim without legs if one had to. “Keep your head! Swim slow!” said Arnold to himself. “You’re all right if you don’t get rattled! I guess it’s getting rattled that makes folks drown. Maybe if you turn over on your back you can do better.” But the attempt to turn produced such a horrible pain in thigh and leg that he gave it up and, faint with agony, was content for the moment to keep himself barely afloat. When the faintness had passed he remembered Toby and Frank and, calling on his tired lungs for all the breath that was in them, sent that first hail.
“He-e-elp!” he shouted.