“Sleeping! Sleeping! You great stupid, you! I never! I.... Just look at the tide—only look!”
The tide was pretty far out, the whole world a mist of pinkish-grey. Step by step they followed the retreating lap of water.
By six o’clock they had the heavy body out, and were dragging it across the rapidly-drying mud.
It was not as big as Hector: five-foot-one at the most, but almost incredibly heavy, with immense rounded shoulders.
By the time they reached the true shore they were done, and flung themselves down, panting, exhausted. But they could not rest. A few minutes more and they were up again, turning the creature over, rubbing the mud away from the hairy body with bunches of grass; parting the long, matted locks which hung over its lowering face, with the overhung brow, flat nose, almost non-existent chin. The eyes were shut, but oddly unsunken: it smelt of marsh slime, of decayed vegetation, but nothing more.
Hector poked forward a finger to see if he could push up one eyelid, and drew back sharply.
“Why—hang it all—the thing’s warm!”
“No wonder, with this sun. I’m dripping from head to foot. Hector, we must go home. Matty will tell; there’ll be the eyes of a row.”
For all her insistence it was another hour before Rhoda could get her brother away. Again and again he met the returning tide with her hat, bringing it back full of water; washing their find from head to foot, combing its matted hair with a clipped fragment of driftwood. But at last they dragged it to a dry dyke, covered it with dry yellow grass, and were off, Rhoda on the step this time, Hector draped limply over the handle of the bicycle.