ACTION
And meanwhile the last of the passing clouds disappeared for Emerson
Skybrow and the myriad stars shone pleasantly upon him, deep down in his
black prison. He separated the strands of soaked hair which lay still
upon the water and beheld a face which for the moment he did not
recognize. The eyes were closed; the face, as near as he could tell in
the starlight, mud-smeared and ashen pale. It looked ghastly, appalling,
this face, with apparently no body connected with it. But Emerson
presently realized how it was.
The body lay barely submerged, face up, and the head lying upon the
debris close under the exposed pile was partly out of water. The
disordered hair had covered the face instead of the back of the head.
Whatever the victim’s fate had been it seemed unlikely that it had been
that of drowning.
It was several moments before Emerson realized that there was a way of
determining whether life existed. And then (notwithstanding the
universal ease with which boy scouts are represented as making these
determinations) he found the matter not easy.
A more coy and elusive thing than the pulse is hardly imaginable, when
the search is made by an amateur. He tried both wrists; then, appalled
at not discovering cheery little pulsations, groped under water and
tried to feel the victim’s heart. With the knowledge of first aid that
many scouts have, he would have known that the closed eyes were a good
sign; there was no fixed stare up into the night.
At last, he was rejoiced to find the pulse; he lost it, then found it
again. It seemed such a trifling thing, that half-palpable beating, to
signify so much. The assurance it gave him aroused him to quick effort.
He was not alone, in that frightful hole, with only death for his
companion.
He looked about him, hardly knowing what to do. But whatever he did it
would be necessary first to lift the victim out of the water. This he
did as gently as he could, lifting the small form under the armpits, and
pulling it up onto the debris. The eyes opened and closed again.
“Margie—you’re—all right—I’m—I’ll take care of you,” he said fearfully.
“Can’t you speak?”
If she could only speak and understand, that would encourage him so
much. For a moment, he paused bewildered, not knowing what to do. No
injury was visible upon the little form. He did not know how to look for
injuries that might be expected from such a fall; broken limbs, a
fractured skull. He was all at sea, helpless. He looked up out of that
frightful place that enclosed him in its four walls. There was more
pathos in his well-expressed despair than there could have been in the
language of panic fear. “I don’t see what I can do in this dilemma,” he
said. “I dare say I’d better call at the top of my voice for
assistance.”
But some unseen force kept him from doing that. No one would have heard
him anyway. Yet a certain persisting self-reliance and a strange fear of
his own voice rising out of that dark hole into the lonely night, was
what deterred him from calling. He was not afraid to be there, but,
oddly, he was afraid to call.
Then, a reassuring thought came to cheer him. The girl had fallen in the
mud, save that her head was somewhat elevated on harder substance. And
her head showed no sign of injury. It seemed unlikely that she was
otherwise injured. Perhaps then, her unconsciousness was just the
unconsciousness of utter exhaustion, which had followed the first shock.
Limping through the shallow water, he procured the longer of the two
pieces of board and laid this at an angle against the wall, its lower
end resting securely on the exposed debris at the bottom. Placed in this
position, the upper end of the plank was within about four feet of the
top of the wall.
Emerson had never done much climbing and it was fortunate that his essay
at this manly sport was made in private. He looked queer and frog-like,
scrambling up the plank. He made little progress until he discovered the
important part played by the knees in such an undertaking. Then he was
able to ascend slowly, laboriously. The scouts would have said he looked
funny climbing; fortunately, he could not see himself as others would
have seen him.
At the upper end of the plank his experimenting to get away from it
would have been ludicrous if the occasion had not been serious. He was
within four feet of the top of the wall, yet he could not disconnect
himself from his slanting support and get a hold anywhere else.
At last, by a hazardous gymnastic effort, he managed to get an uncertain
hold on a rock doubtfully embedded in the crumbling plaster on top of
the wall. He then ventured to rest one foot on the ragged end of the
plank and succeeded in lifting himself to a standing posture. He felt a
certain sense of elation along with his tremulousness. There is a kind
of fascination in the knowledge that safety, even life, hangs by a
thread. Emerson stood upon his uncertain foothold, reaching above him
and clutching the rock on the wall. What to do next, he could not
imagine. He could not regain the safety of the plank. Neither could he
pull himself up onto the wall.