"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 shivered. 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.

The boy gave a jump when he heard a step behind him and saw the old doctor standing there.

The night was very still. Nothing could be heard but the roar of the surf on the beach. Eric, who was imaginative, thought that the surf seemed to be triumphing in having s.n.a.t.c.hed another life. Feeling sure that the doctor would understand him, the boy turned and said,

"Doctor, shall we be able to beat out the sea?"

The Highland imagination of the doctor instantly caught the lad's meaning.

"You've heard it, too!" he said. "Many and many's the time I've thought the sea was skreeling in triumph when a drowned man was brought ash.o.r.e.

But I've s.n.a.t.c.hed a many back."

"Will you--" began the boy.

"Doctor!" came a cry from within.

"Well?" he answered eagerly, stepping to the door.

"I thought I caught a breath!"

The doctor's keen eyes glinted as he knelt beside the prostrate figure.

Nine, ten, eleven times the weight of the life-saver was brought forward and released. At the twelfth, there was a slight respiration.

"Did you see, Doctor?" he cried, pausing in his work.

"What the mischief are you stopping for?" was the doctor's impatient answer. Then he added, "You're doing splendidly, Murchison; just keep it up!"

Five more minutes pa.s.sed without a single sign. Both men had begun to feel that possibly they had been mistaken, when there was a definite flutter of an eyelid. The surfman would have given a triumphant shout but for the doctor's rebuke a moment or two before.

Quietly the old Scotchman began to promote circulation by rubbing the legs upward, so as to drive the venous blood to the heart and thus try to start its action. Almost ten minutes elapsed before the doctor's patience was rewarded with the faint throb of a heart-beat, then another. It was soft and irregular at first, but gradually the blood began to move through the arteries and in a few minutes a pulse could be felt. The lips lost a little of their blue color and breathing began.

"He's got a grand heart!" said the old doctor, ten minutes later, as the pulse-beats began to come with regularity. "I hardly believed that we could bring him round. It's a good thing it was this chap and not the other. We could never have saved yon man if he had been half as long submerged."

"You really think that we shall save him?" queried Eric, more to hear the doctor's a.s.surance than because of any doubt of the result.

"We have saved him," was the reply. "In a day or two he'll be as well as he ever was. And, to my thinking, he'll be wiser than he was before, for he'll never do such a silly thing as to go out for a swim at night-time after dinner with--well, after a heavy dinner."

"Seems too bad that we can't tell his friend," the boy suggested. "It's just awful to hear him accusing himself all through the night."

"If he's asleep," the doctor answered, "that's better for him than anything else. Oh, I don't know," he continued, "he seems to be stirring. Do you want to tell him?"

Eric flashed a grateful glance at the doctor.

"If I might?"

"Go ahead!"

"Mr. Willett," said the boy, coming close to the stretcher. "Mr.