“You poor boy!” she cried. “Tell me what to do.”
“Can you put your hands on my shoulders, and tell me which way to swim? I’m all turned round.”
He drew her to him, and revolved her and set her hands on his shoulders, then turned his back to her, and swam with all-fours. She floated out above him like a mantle, and, holding her head high, directed him. She was his eyes, and he was her limbs, and thus curiously twinned they fought their way through the alien element.
The sea seemed to want them for its own. It attacked them with waves that went over them with the roar of railroad trains. Beneath, the icy undertow gripped at his feet. His lungs hurt him so that he felt that death would be a lesser ache than breathing.
Sheila’s weight, for all the lightness the water gave it, threatened to drown them both. But her words were full of help. In his behalf she put into her voice more cheer than she found in her heart. The shore seemed rather to recede than to approach.
Now and then she would call aloud for help, but the salt-water had weakened her throat and there was always some new sensation ashore.
At length, Winfield could hear the crash of the breakers and at length Sheila was telling him that they were almost in. Again and again he stabbed downward for a footing and found none. Eventually, however, he felt the blessed foundation of the world beneath him and, turning, caught Sheila about the waist and thrust her forward till she too could stand.
The beach was bad where they landed and the baffled waters dragged at their trembling legs like ropes, but they made onward to the dry sand. They fell down, panting, aghast, and stared at the innocent sea, where joyous billows came in like young men running with their hands aloft. Far to their deft the mob shrieked and cavorted. Farther away to their right the next colony of maniacs cavorted and shrieked.
When breathing was less like swallowing swords they looked at each other, smiled with sickly lips, and clasped cold, shriveled hands.
“Well,” said Sheila, “you saved my life, didn’t you?”