JAWS UNSEEN
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....