Oh! what agony I endured.
Had my labor been in vain?
My desperate struggle had all been for her, to save that precious spark of life.
Speech was absolutely denied me just then, but I made some hoarse articulate sound as I staggered to where she lay, for the last struggle had actually torn me adrift from the buoy and its burden.
My knife—I managed to get it out and, with hands that shook as though with the palsy, severed the cords.
Then taking her in my arms, a dead weight, I moved back a pace at a time, laughing like one demented at the waves that came rolling about my feet, cheated out of their fair prey.
Where the sand became free from the sea I found a hummock of grass, and there I gently laid my darling down.
Bending over I chafed her hands and did all that a frantic man could think of calculated to restore to life those almost drowned.
Alas! there was no response—she lay like a wilted flower in my arms, so cold, so still that a terrible fear sprang up within my agonized heart that she would never awaken, that those beauteous eyes of heavenly blue were sealed forever.
And then it came upon me what the sense of utter desolation might mean.