Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/216

 body to hold by except a trouser-belt about the loins, which she could dimly see as the foam broke over it and the motion of the water rocked it. She grasped the belt with one hand, and, swimming with the other, turned now flat upon her breast instead of on her back, she towed the body behind her towards the land, as she might have towed a piece of driftwood.

She thought he was dead, but having thus reached him she could not abandon him; and there might be breath in him still. She had seen drowned men restored to life.

Happily for her and him, she was but a little way from shore, or she could not have continued to push and drag the inert mass that lay so heavily upon the water. The sea upon that portion of the beach was shallow; she soon stood upon her feet and waded up to her middle, always dragging the senseless swimmer with her till she gained the pebbles and the sand, and let him drop on them.

It was now very dark.

She bent over him and breathed into his nostrils, and tried to make him vomit the water from his lungs, and did what she had seen the fishermen of Santa Tarsilla do for any one of their number overcome with such