"She's been under fifteen minutes," the boatman said. "There is little chance now, even if we get her up. My God! what fools those greasers are! Eating, drinking, and singing while their kid was going down!"
John had time to observe the group on the shore now. The mother of the girl had fainted, and the other woman was fanning her as she lay on the rocks, unsheltered from the sun. The children, in their wet suits, stood crying lustily.
"We can't do anything now," the boatman said when another five minutes had passed. "She is done for, but we'd as well keep on the job to satisfy 'em. The tow has taken her out, most likely."
Ten minutes more. Even the group on the shore seemed to have given up hope. However, the irons caught. It might be a rock, John thought, but the object yielded gently. "Hold! Not so hard!" John ordered. "You might pull it loose. I've caught something!"
Carefully he drew in the rope. He saw the blue dress through several feet of water, and, reaching down, he caught it with his hand. A moment later and the drowned girl, with Binks clutched in her death-grip, was drawn into the boat.
A scream of joy from the reviving mother of the girl rent the air. Having been unconscious of the passage of time, she evidently thought her child might yet be alive. As the boatman gently pulled toward the rocks, John disengaged Binks from the stiff fingers, and held him in his lap.
"Poor mut!" the boatman said. "She choked the life out of him. They are always like that—they will grab at a floating chip. Turn the girl's head down, will you, and let the water run out? There may be a speck of life left, but I think she is as dead as a mackerel."
Putting Binks aside, John obeyed. The girl's face was purple, her lips foaming. The rocks reached, the two Italian men, their yellow faces stamped with agony, were ready up to their waists in water to take the girl ashore.
John knew nothing about what is called "first aid to the drowning," and so, with his dead pet in his arms, he climbed up the rocks. Men were gathering from the two boat-houses. He heard somebody say, "There is a cop and a doctor!" The screaming women, the sobbing children, the awed questions of spectators just arrived, fell on closed ears, as far as John was concerned. Picking up his coat, he wrapped it about Binks and bore him homeward. Looking back, he saw the doctor examining the body on the rocks. John sat down alone in the sun. He told himself that he would let his clothing dry on him as he walked homeward. But what was to be done about the body of his pet? He couldn't take it home with him, and he knew of no burial-ground for dogs. He sat down on the shore to think it out. His mind was in a queer jumble of resentment and resigned despair. How could Binks actually be dead? How could he go home without him? And yet the wet, limp object with the bulging, glazed eyes and distorted muzzle was all that was left of the loving, vivacious animal to which he had been so warmly linked.
The doctor was coming back. He passed John, and then paused. "Is that the dog she drowned?" he asked, bending down sympathetically and stroking the animal's coat.