Part 11 (1/2)

The man in the boat stopped laughing and called sharply to him, the words head down coming clear to us on the pier.

Mrs. Rainey had begun to pace up and down the edge of the pier, muttering to herself again. I heard her say something with the name of G.o.d in it.

Rainey called again into the lake, but with no effect on the boiling confusion there.

Linn's head came up high again, and he seemed to be trying to climb up into the air.

Then he plunged down and the water closed over him.

Mrs. Rainey had stopped running up and down the edge of the pier. She was standing beside me. Her fingers were digging into my arm. She was saying, ”Oh, Oh, Oh!” softly and foolishly.

The black head of the man in the lake showed on the surface like the snout of a fish, and vanished, his white face not showing at all.

Rainey went out of the boat, into the lake in a short clean arc, as smoothly as if he had been poured into the water.

The next few seconds seemed like a lot of minutes-before the two heads came to the surface again.

They came up side by side.

Linn's arms came out of the water, flailing, beating the lake as if it was something he was fighting. They knocked spume high over his head.

Rainey caught Linn, let him go, caught him, let him go again.

They maneuvered around in the water, one smoothly, skillfully, the other crazily, violently.

Rainey was trying to get behind Linn, and failing.

Twice it looked as if Rainey had tried to hit Linn with a fist, to quiet him. Linn was twisting and turning and beating up too much water for the blows to be clearly seen, but if they landed they didn't do much good.

Linn was fighting now for a hold on Rainey.

Rainey's attempts to get a safe hold on Linn failed.

Rainey seemed to be tiring, moving slower around Linn now.

Mrs. Rainey's digging fingers had my arm sore by now. She was babbling excitedly, incoherently.

I turned my head to the others and asked: ”Hadn't somebody better go help him?”

The postmaster's son jumped across the pier and disappeared down a ladder. Others, including Metcalf, followed him.

I remained with Mrs. Rainey, watching the two men in the water.

There was less confusion there now, and their heads were close together, but it didn't look as if Rainey had secured a very good safe-hold on Linn. However they were moving, if very slowly, in the direction of the empty boat.

The roar of a motor broke out below us, and a blunt boat carrying the postmaster's son, Metcalf, and two other men dashed away from the pier.

Mrs. Rainey screamed again and her fingers ground painfully into the bone of my arm. I looked quickly from the motor boat to where the men had been struggling in the water.

Neither Rainey nor Linn could be seen. The surface of the lake was smooth and s.h.i.+ny except where the motor boat cut it.

Then, after what seemed too many minutes to justify any guess except that both men had gone under for good, the water was broken close to the deserted boat, almost in the path of the motor boat. It was just a queer hump in the surface, as if something had struggled up almost to the top.

The motor boat sheered off. Men leaned over the side of it where the hump had showed. The boat and the men hid the spot from us.

The boat twisted again, slowing up, and b.u.mped into the empty boat, lying far over into the water under the weight of the leaning men.

Presently we could see that they were lifting Linn aboard.

Rainey did not appear.

Metcalf took off his coat and shoes and went overboard, came up after a while, rested for a moment with one arm on the gunwale of the rowboat, and dived again.

One of the other men began diving.

The postmaster's son brought Linn to the pier in the motorboat. The others stayed in the rowboat, taking turns diving. Men from the pier in other boats joined them out there.