My head throbbed and hammered. My senses reeled and rallied, and reeled again as I tore and struggled. Then, when hope was leaving me, I felt something snap. I caught at the body beside me and I drifted upward, and upward;—I did not know how or where.
The thought flashed through me;—this is the last. It is all over.
I opened my throat to allow the useless carbonised air to escape. I was conscious of the act and knew its consequences:—a flood of salt water in my lungs, then suffocation and death. But I did not care now.
My lungs deflated, then—oh! delicious ecstasy!—instead of water, I drew to my dying body,—air; reviving, life-giving, life-sustaining oxygen.
I panted and gasped, as life ran through my veins. Blood danced in my thumping heart. I caught at my reeling senses. I clutched, like a miser, at the body I held.
I struggled, and opened my eyes.
I was on the surface of the water,—afloat. In my arms, I held the lady I had wrested from the deadly seaweed.
How well I knew, even in those awful moments, that I was not the cause of that wonderful rescue. I was present,—true,—but it was the decreeing of the great, living, but Unseen Power, who had further use for both of us in the bright old world, who had more work for us to perform ere he called us to our last accounting.
Well I knew then that every moment of time was more precious than ordinary hours of reckoning, yet I dared not hurry with my burden across that short strip of water, lest we should again become entangled.
Foot by foot, I worked my way, until I was clear of the seaweed, then I kicked forcefully for the shore, and with my unconscious, perhaps dead, burden in my arms, I scrambled up the face of the rocks and into the house.