Part 3 (1/2)

”Showed a good deal of grit to do even that, it seems to me,” said one of the life-savers. ”It's an awful feeling to be nearly drowned.”

”It did show grit,” agreed Johnson. ”If it had been a drowning woman with long hair, she could have been held up all right; but a grip on the collar, when the head is hanging forward, means a dead lift out of water. I don't wonder that the young fellow wasn't able to do it.

”When my pal reached there, he got Mooney aboard, the other two clambered in and they started for the sh.o.r.e. Mooney was as purple as a grape and his arms were so stiff that two men, one on each side, could barely move them. Nearly a quart of water was got out of him, and they had an awful job prying open his jaws.

”They worked over him for an hour and twenty minutes before there was the slightest sign of life. Not until twenty-five minutes more did the heart begin, and Mooney did not regain consciousness until nine hours later. As his watch had stopped at 4:20 P.M. and it was 4:53 when Streeter got ash.o.r.e, that man's heart had stopped, his breathing had stopped and he had been practically dead for more than two hours.”

”Just goes to show,” said one of the others, ”that it isn't merely swallowing water that drowns a fellow.”

”It isn't swallowing water at all, as I understand,” rejoined another member of the group. ”Drowning's a kind of poisoning of the blood because the lungs can't get oxygen. It's just like choking to death or being hanged.”

There was a call from within.

”Murchison!”

The life-saver who had just been speaking, got up quickly and went in to relieve Ryan.

”Any luck?” Johnson asked, as the latter came out.

The Irishman shook his head.

”There's nothin' yet, but he moight come round anny minute,” was his reply, with the invincible optimism of his race.

Eric had been thinking of Murchison's description of drowning.

”Why did they roll half-drowned people on a barrel in the old times?” he asked.

”Sure, they were ijits,” Ryan answered cheerfully.

”But what was the idea? To get the water out?”

”Just that. They used to think the lungs were a tank.”

”Murchison was saying that people drowned because they couldn't get oxygen. Isn't there oxygen in water?”

”Av coorse there is,” the Irishman replied. ”But ye've got to have the gills of a fish to use it. Annyhow, a man's got warm blood an' a fish has cold. It takes a lot of oxygen to get a man's blood warm. An' if he doesn't get it, he dies.

”Ye see, Eric,” he continued, ”that's why ye've got to go on workin'

over a drowned man. Ye can't tell how badly he's poisoned. An' it's honest I am in tellin' ye that I think we've got a chance in there.”

”You do?”

”I do that,” was the cheery answer. ”There's no tellin'.”

Again came that cry from the station, a cry whose very repet.i.tion made it all the more nerve-racking,

”I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save myself!”

Eric s.h.i.+vered. There was something gruesome in the monotony of the same words over and over again. The noises on the beach died down. Several of the men, who did not live at the station-house, went to their cottages.