THROUGH THE UNDERTOW.
The shock was nothing to me, I had really been anticipating it so long.
I kept my senses in a creditable manner, for well I knew everything,
her life, my own, depended upon coolness.
For a brief space of time we were under water, and then both came to
the surface.
One danger was past--I had dreaded lest some portion of the wreck might
be hurled upon us with murderous force; but, wonderful to say, I saw
nothing of any timbers or anything at all after being swept into the
sea when the deck had broken up.
That blessed buoy deserved all the appreciation I could ever bestow
upon it, for surely it was a good investment. Hildegarde knew something
of swimming, having always been fond of the water, and this knowledge
stood her well now.
I could see that she was not choking, as a novice might have been when
overwhelmed by a gigantic billow.
Now began a struggle for life.
I had much to fight for, everything that could nerve a man to deeds of
valor, for love leads the world as an incentive.
Desperately I fought.
There were times when it seemed as though the end were nigh--when the
relentless waves almost tore me away from my precious charge in spite
of my care in binding myself to her.
How tenaciously I clung, with set teeth and hands that almost cracked
under the pressure.
Then the tension would relax, and I was able to recover my breath to
some extent, preparatory to the next wild plunge.
Bad as the situation seemed, I knew there must be others who were even
worse off--who had already been beaten into insensibility by the waves,
and for whom all hope had fled.
I saw nothing of them, though this was not strange, with such a vast
ocean around us.
For Hildegarde my fears were greatest--alone I would have fought a good
fight, but not having the holy incentive that nerved my arm now, I
might have yielded up the ghost.
Hildegarde was suffering now; it made my heart bleed to realize my
utter helplessness to assist her, for whom I would have shed every drop
of my blood.
She choked more than once as the seas repeatedly broke over us,
allowing scant time to catch a breath, and I raged with a fury that was
perhaps childish, to realize how unable I was to shield her against
their lashing.
All this while we had been drifting with the rollers, and must be
drawing near the shore.
Eagerly I watched my opportunity, when upon the crest of a billow, to
strain my water-soaked eyes toward where it should be.
Painful though my vision had become, thank Heaven! I saw the blessed
shore--it was also close at hand, though before I could hope to gain
its friendly shelter the worst struggle of all must be gone through
with; for the deadly sea puss forms where the retreating undertow meets
the incoming waves, and riotous war ensues.
And when, crowned with victory, I should stagger out of the foamy
yeast, clasping in my arms that form so precious, would there still be
a sweet spirit within that earthly tenement, or might my embrace but
hold the lifeless clay of my best beloved?
Always must it remain more or less of a mystery how I reached the shore.
I remember the struggle, and how hopeless it seemed when the sea puss
had me in its whirling grasp--how futile my endeavors appeared, no
matter how madly I strained.
Then there came a change--I had been, as it were, plucked as a brand
from the burning--a roller freed us from the undertow and tossed us
shoreward.
My feet touched bottom--it was but a secondary anchorage, and then I
was borne off again, but somehow it rekindled hope that had well-nigh
died.
Again I watched my chance--again I felt that magic thrill, and bursting
into a supreme effort planted my toes in the shifting sand, holding my
own against the rush of the receding water, holding the painted buoy
and its precious burden, which had broken loose from the rope.
Those seconds were fraught with momentous issues.
Almost exhausted as I was, I found it the battle of my life to persist
to the end, but it chanced that the wave upon which we had been borne
was the first of a trio, the others following unusually speedily upon
its heels.
They saved the day.
Like driftwood almost, I was lifted up, carried shoreward and deposited
on my knees in the sand--then came the last wave washing me still
farther up the strand.
I was done for--my breath, my strength had utterly given out, and I
could not have raised an arm to have saved myself had the sea attempted
to claim us again.
Fortune willed otherwise, and we had at least a last single chance for
life.
There is no telling how long I might have lain there, gasping for
breath, gurgling out the salt water I had taken into my lungs, only
that there suddenly flashed through my mind, as by a ray of light, the
remembrance of the precious life that had been intrusted to my care.
That gave me a new and desperate lease of power; I seemed to once again
feel the warm blood pulsating through my veins, and be endowed with
physical vigor.
Still, such was my utter exhaustion I must have staggered to my feet
like a man of three-score years and ten.
There lay the painted buoy and Hildegarde’s precious, water-draggled
form; how pitiable it looked with the long golden hair streaming about
her person; what a shiver it gave me to think how she resembled one
drowned with the seaweed clinging to her hair.
Oh! what agony I endured.
Had my labor been in vain?
My desperate struggle had all been for her, to save that precious spark
of life.
Speech was absolutely denied me just then, but I made some hoarse
articulate sound as I staggered to where she lay, for the last struggle
had actually torn me adrift from the buoy and its burden.
My knife--I managed to get it out and, with hands that shook as though
with the palsy, severed the cords.
Then taking her in my arms, a dead weight, I moved back a pace at a
time, laughing like one demented at the waves that came rolling about
my feet, cheated out of their fair prey.
Where the sand became free from the sea I found a hummock of grass, and
there I gently laid my darling down.
Bending over I chafed her hands and did all that a frantic man could
think of calculated to restore to life those almost drowned.
Alas! there was no response--she lay like a wilted flower in my arms,
so cold, so still that a terrible fear sprang up within my agonized
heart that she would never awaken, that those beauteous eyes of
heavenly blue were sealed forever.
And then it came upon me what the sense of utter desolation might mean.