CHAPTER XXVI.
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 thatearthly 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 hadtaken 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 fearsprang 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.