darkness had fallen when wilfred reached the submerged rock. there was no voice now, and only the sound of the beating water answered his own call. the launch was not to be seen but the end of its long flagpole projected a few inches out of the lake marking its watery grave.
wilfred clutched the flagpole and tried to get a foothold on the sunken launch. one foot rested on a narrow ridge; he thought it was the coaming. then the pole broke, his foot slipped, and he fell heavily into the cockpit of the launch.
if he had been as familiar with the launch as other boys at camp, he might have realized where he had fallen. but he gave no thought to that. his groping hand encountered something hard and he grasped it in an effort to extricate himself and get into unobstructed water. the thing he had grasped moved and instantly he felt a sensation of crushing in his arm, then a tearing of the flesh and excruciating pain. he had turned the fly-wheel of the engine and as his hand slipped around with it his forearm became wedged between the moving wheel and the engine bed. the rim of the heavy iron wheel was equipped with gear teeth to mesh with those of a magneto and these sawed into his arm like the teeth of a circular saw.
screaming with the sudden pain, he pulled his arm loose, the wheel moving easily back again to the compression point. he thought some horrid, lurking creature of the depths had bitten him and he swam to the surface, in a panic of fear, and agonized with pain. he did not dare to use his one sound arm to feel of the other for fear of sinking again into that submerged jungle. the wounded arm was all but useless, the hand had no strength, and he was suffering torture. besides, he felt giddy and kept himself from swooning by sheer will power, strengthened by the imminent peril of drowning.
yet the few seconds that elapsed before he won the doubtful shelter of the rock were fraught with even greater danger than he knew, and it was in a half-conscious state that he wriggled onto the slippery, unseen mass and lay across it, swept by the dashing water, panting, suffering, and trying to keep his senses. it was only the same wilfred cowell who had made a simple promise to his mother—the same wilfred cowell cast in a new but not more tragic role....
what he set out to do, he would do though all the world of boys cast stones at him and the earth fell away beneath his feet. what he set out to do, he would do. and stricken here in the darkness, amid the angry elements, he kept his line of communication with actual things open by the sheer power of his will. there was a moment—just a moment—when he thought the slimy points of rock across which he lay were an airplane and that he was being borne upon its mounting wings. but he shook off this demon tempting him into oblivion and kept his senses.
he felt very weak and giddy, the hand of his wounded arm tingled as if it were asleep, his elbow seemed to have lost its pliancy and his whole forearm throbbed, throbbed, throbbed.
with his sound arm he swept the neighboring water in a gesture of petulance, the petulance of pain, that gesture of despair and impatience seen in hospitals when an impatient arm is raised and dropped idly on the bed-clothes. but wilfred’s arm fell upon something else—a human form.
the startling discovery acted, for the moment, like a potent drug. he rolled over and, bracing his feet among the crevices in the rock, moved his hand across a ghastly upturned face with streaking hair plastered over it. here, then, was the delinquent who had taken the launch contrary to rules and gone forth in it challenging these boisterous elements. the face was not recognizable as any that wilfred had ever seen. it might have been hervey willetts; hervey had never bothered much with wandering willie cowyard.
the importance of knowing the full truth gave wilfred the strength to ascertain it. he had never felt a pulse. but he had lain and stood patiently while doctors had listened at his back and at his chest as if these parts of his body were keyholes. he knew, if anybody did, how to find out if a heart were beating; he was a postgraduate in this.
so there upon that lonely, wind-swept clump of rock, he laid his ear against the chest of the drenched, unconscious figure, and listened. he moved his head in quest of the right spot. again he moved it but no answering throb was there to relieve the fearful panting of his own anxious heart. the wind moaned on the mountaintop and swept the black lake and lashed it into fury. somewhere on the troubled waters voices could be heard—voices on the raft that had been borne off its course; and now in the complete darkness its baffled crew knew not where to steer. far off on shore were the lights of camp, and tiny lamps moving about—lanterns carried by scouts in oilskins.
then it was granted to wilfred cowell to learn something; not all, but something. the heart of that unconscious form was beating.
how can i say that wilfred chose wisely not to call aloud and guide the all but frenzied searchers to this perilous refuge? perhaps some silent voice told him that this was his job and his alone. perhaps, being himself half-frenzied with pain, he knew not what he did.
“i—i came,” he murmured in his weakness, “and i’ll—we’ll—swim—go back—findings is—is—is—keepings.”
how do i know where people get the strength to do sublime things—or the reasons. perhaps every scurrilous word and look askance that he had known at camp came to his aid now and made him strong. perhaps wandering willie and even wilfraid coward helped him; who shall say? or perhaps his boyish utterance there in that lonely darkness, that findings is keepings, was in some way a support. this limp, unconscious form belonged to him—it was his!
and he would bear it to shore. or they would go down together....
