The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

2 THE ARGOSY. and wondered at it, but this did not keep him from tearing off his coat, waistcoat and shoes. In an instant he was sharing the perils of the whirlpool with the un- fortunate stranger. He swam strongly and fought shrewdly against the pull of the voracious eddies. The place had been a part of his environ- ment for many years; he had seen men and children drawn fatally into that treacherously playful network of ripples, but he knew it so well that he sported with it in its own game. When it caught his feet and drew him downward with insinuating gentleness he threw himself back and made a detour, to try another approach. When it grasped him with angry impatience he struck out stoutly and battled his way out of the em- brace. The unknown man saw him, or heard him, through the dusk, and rallied his flagging strength. His head and arms sank from view once, but reappeared, and the two men strained hearts and muscles, the one as eager to give succor as the other to receive it. Jerry came so near to the man pres- ently that he saw his bearded face; then watery tentacles seized his legs and pulled him beneath the surface. In that moment of desire to help another he had grown heedless of the rules of the game. He turned over in the blinding flood and dived for the rocky bottom, and when he rose it was to the calmer surface outside the danger zone. He had taken up the play again and won the trick. Undaunted, full of grim challenge, he struck in once more, giving buffet for buf- fet. The stranger was new to the game and losing fast, but losing like a sports- man. He sank again, and rose with less vigor, but he played the last moves with resolution. He gained a yard, and Jerry matched it; then their cold, cramped hands met and clasped, and the fiendishly chuckling whirlpool failed to break the bond. Jerry braced himself, expecting the frenzied tackle of the drowning man, but he mis- judged the stranger; the face, now brought close to his own, was white and strained, but there was no madness in it. Two to one now! The whirlpool’s chuckle became savage; it resented the puny impudence that held out so long. Jerry lifted his face above the boiling foam and took a breath. “Let yourself go!” he gasped. The man, obedient and trusting, re- laxed. Jerry held him, and_ plunged. They had no breath to spare, but they went down into the blackness of the night water and fought their way into the still shadows. They rose again, and the angry gurgles of the checkmated whirlpool sounded far off. Jerry swam now, bearing an inert bur- den. His feet sought and found a shelv- ing beach. He staggered ashore and fell prone with the senseless body of his part- ner in the game that was won. Five minutes of rest and air revived the rescuer and restored him to action. The man by his side was half drowned, and he proceeded to employ the methods of professional life-savers. Although well-nigh exhausted himself, he worked with great earnestness of pur- pose, and the stranger’s respiration be- came discernible again, his pulses throbbed and in the course of an hour he opened his eyes and was conscious. The moon peeped over the tree-tops back of the beach, and looked down on the two men as they sat on the broad, flat — rocks. Fantastic arabesques of dusky black and pale silver and misty blue flut- tered about them, the river wavelets laved the shore gently, and the discomfited ed- dies murmured sullenly at the end of the rocky point. “You're a brave man!” said the stran- ger, with the thick hoarseness of one who finds his voice after long silence. “It is hard to say what—what one feels in such acase. I’m very grateful!” Jerry Hampton was embarrassed. He waved his hands in a gesture of depreca- tion. “T’m glad you’re alive,” he answered, (E() 0)(0) AMUNG SS (C@