The Cottage of Delight: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

Across the river in a bluish haze towered the Palisades, and on either side of him in the distance jutted out from the shore he was on long, slender, gray and yellow boat-houses with their pile-anchored floats. On his right at the water's edge was a group of Italians, picnicking together. There were the four heads of two families, stocky laboring-men, fat housewives, and young girls and boys. They had made a fire of driftwood on the rocks, and John could see a great pot of something stewing, and smelled the aroma of coffee and broiled sausages. The boys and girls had put on foreign-looking bathing-suits and, with tiny water-wings under their arms, were splashing about, trying to learn to swim.

"Binks, old chap," John said, aloud, as had become a habit of his, "there are some deep holes where those silly people are. Those kids may get beyond their depth. I hope the men can swim."

The Italians had a guitar. Some one played it, and native songs were sung. They were very happy. John told himself that it might be some sort of reunion of close friends or relatives. There were so many shouts of merriment in Italian, loud commands to the children from their mothers, and joyous retorts from the bathers, that John failed to hear a shrill cry of alarm from their midst. It was Binks, indeed, who suddenly pricked up his ears, barked, and began to run toward the picnickers. At first, absorbed in reflection, John paid no attention to the dog's antics, but, as Binks continued to bark excitedly, he stood up and looked toward the bathers. The children now ashore were screaming, women were shouting, waving their hands, and with their clothing on the two men were wading out into the water which from the passage of a great steamer was rolling like the surf of an ocean. That the men could not swim John saw at once, and he ran down the shore toward them.

"For God's sake, meester, save her! save my daughter!" a man screamed. "Me no swim! Dere, dere!" and he pointed to a pair of water-wings floating in a circle of bubbles thirty feet from the rocks.

John was a good swimmer, and, throwing off his coat, he plunged in at once, but Binks, who had been taught to spring into water and fetch back such things as sticks or a ball thrown in, and had sighted the water-wings, was several yards ahead of him.

"Dere, dere! My God! she's up de third time!" shrieked the girl's father. "Catch her, meester, catch her! It's de last time—de last time!"

On a curling swell John saw the girl's head and shoulders above the water. She was going down again, and a great rolling wave was close upon her. John saw that he could not reach her in time, and he saw something else that filled him with horror. Binks, with the captured water-wings in his mouth, was within the girl's reach, and she grasped him and dragged him under. There was a gurgling struggle, widening rings filled with bubbles floated on the swaying water, and nothing was seen of the girl or the dog.

A wail of despair rang out from the shore; men, women, and children ran to and fro, screaming. John was soon over the spot where the girl and dog had disappeared, and, exhausting the air from his lungs, he dived down as far as he could. He kept his eyes open, and moving from him in the murky depths he could not quite reach for lack of breath he saw the blue dress of the girl. That Binks was in her dying clutch he well knew. The buoyancy of John's body raised him to the top sooner than he wished, and when he appeared with nothing in his grasp the screams from the shore were louder than ever.

"Again! again! meester!" the father yelled, "farther up. O God! O God!"

Again John dived. This time he went quite to the bottom and crawled along from rock to rock, keeping himself down by the clutch of his hands. But to no avail. He saw nothing and was fairly bursting for lack of breath. The progress upward seemed endless, and when the surface was reached he was almost dead from exhaustion. But he dived again and again. Binks was drowning, he kept thinking, and there was little else in his mind. When he had dived unsuccessfully a dozen times a man arrived in a rowboat from one of the boat-houses with a rope and grappling-irons. Taking John into the boat, the two began to drag the river over the fatal spot. The man held the oars and John the rope.