“How far do you want to go?” he asked presently.
“I don’t care,” she answered, gazing into the sky. He rowed on, the oarlocks thumping and measured, and she turned onto her belly, dragging her arm in the water while small bubbles of silver fire clung to her arm, broke away reluctantly and swam slowly to the surface, disappeared…
Little casual swells slapped the bottom of the boat, lightly, and slid along beside the hull, mooned with bubbling fire. She slid her legs overside and swung from the stern of the boat, dragging through the water. He pulled on a few strokes.
“I can’t row with you hanging there,” he said. Her two hands vanished from the gunwale and her dark head vanished, but when he slewed the boat sharply and half rose, she reappeared, whipping a faint shower of silver drops from her head. The moon slid and ran on her alternate arms and before her spread a fan of silver lines, shifting and spreading and fading.
“Gee,” she said. Her voice came low along the water, not loud but still distinct: little waves lapped at it. “It’s grand: warm as warm. You better come in.” Her head vanished again, he saw her sickling legs as they vanished, and once more she rayed shattered silver from her flung head. She swam up to the boat. “Come on in, David,” she insisted.
“Take off your skirt and pants and jump in. I’ll swim out and wait for you. Come on, now,” she commanded.
So he removed his outer garments, sitting in the bottom of the boat, and slid quickly and modestly into the water. “Isn’t it grand?” she called to him. “Come on out here.”
“We better not get too far from the boat,” he said cautiously, “she ain’t got any anchor, you know.”
“We can catch it. It won’t drift fast. Come on out here, and I’ll race you back to it.”
He swam out to where her dark wet head awaited him. “I bet I beat you,” she challenged. “Are you ready? One. Two. Three — Go!” And she did beat him and with a single unceasing motion she slid upward and into the tender, and stood erect for the moonlight to slide over her in hushed silver.
“Ill plunge for distance with you,” she now challenged. David hung by his hands, submerged to his neck. She waited for him to get into the skiff, then she said: “You can dive, can’t you?” But he still clung to the gunwale, looking up at her.
“Come on, David,” she said sharply. “Are you timid, or what? I’m not going to look at you, if you don’t want me to.” So he got into the boat, modestly keeping his back to her, but even his wet curious garment could not make ridiculous the young lean splendor of him.
“I don’t see what you are ashamed of. You’ve got a good physique,” she told him. “Tall and hard looking…. Are you ready? One. Two. Three — Go!”
But soon she was content to float on her back and recover breath, while he trod water beside her. Little hands of water lapped at her, in her hair and upon her face, and she breathed deeply, closing her eyes against the bland waning moon “I’ll hold you up a while,” he offered, putting his hand under the small of her back.
“You sure can,” she said, holding herself motionless. “Is it hard to do? Let me see if I can hold you up. This water is different from seawater: you don’t hardly sink in seawater if you want to.” She let her legs sink and he lay obediently on his back. “I can hold you up, can’t I? Say, can you carry somebody in the water, like lifesavers?”
“A little,” he admitted and she rolled again onto her back, and he showed her how it was done. Then she must try it herself, and he submitted with dubious resignation. Her hard young arm gripped him chokingly across his throat, jamming his windpipe, and she plunged violently forward, threshing her legs.
He jerked up his arms to remove her strangling elbow and his head went under, openmouthed. He fought free of her and reappeared gasping. Her concerned face came to him and she tried to hold him up, unnecessarily.
“I’m so sorry: I didn’t mean to duck you.”
“It’s all right,” he said, coughing and strangling.
“I didn’t do it right, did I? Are you all right now?” She watched him anxiously, trying to support him.
“I’m all right,” he repeated. “You had the wrong hold,” he explained, treading water. “You had me around the neck.”
“Gee, I thought I was doing it right. I’ll do it right this time.”
“I guess we better wait and practise it in shallow water sometime,” he demurred quickly.
“Why… all right,” she agreed. “I think I know how, now. I guess I had better learn good, first, though. I’m awful sorry I strangled you.”
“It don’t hurt any more. I don’t notice it.”
“But it was such a dumb thing to do. I’ll learn it good next time.”
“You know how now, all right. You just got the wrong hold that time. Try it again: see if you don’t know it.”
“You don’t mind?” she said with quick joy. “I won’t catch you wrong this time…. No, no: I might duck you again. I’d better learn it first.”
“Sure you won’t,” he said. “You know how now. You won’t hurt me. Try it.” He turned onto his back.
“Gee, David,” she said. She slid her arm carefully across his chest and beneath his opposite arm. “That’s right? Now, I’m going.”
She held him carefully, intent on doing it correctly, while he encouraged her. But their progress was maddeningly slow: the boat seemed miles away, and so much of her effort was needed to keep her own head above water.
Soon she was breathing faster, gulping air and then closing her mouth against the water her thrusting arm swirled up against her face. I will do it, I will do it, she told herself, but it was so much harder than it had looked. The skiff rose and fell against the stars, and mooned water bubbled about her.
It would take more effort or she’d have to give up. And she’d drown before that.
The arm that held him was numb, and she swam harder, shifting her grip and again her hard elbow shut with strangling force upon his windpipe. But he was expecting it and without moving his body he twisted his head aside and filled his lungs and shut his mouth and eyes….
Soon she ceased swimming and her arm slid down again, holding him up, and he emptied his lungs and opened his eyes to remark the gunwale of the tender rising and falling against the sky above his head.
“I did make it,” she gasped, “I did make it. Are you all right?” she asked, panting. “I sure did it, David. I knew I could.” She clung to the skiff, resting her head upon her hands. “I thought for a while, when I had to change my hold, that I was doing it wrong again.
But I did it right, didn’t I?” The remote chill stars swung over them, and the decaying disc of the moon, over the empty world in which they clung by their hands, side by side. “I’m pretty near all in,” she admitted.
“It’s pretty hard,” he agreed, “until you’ve practised a lot. I’ll hold you up until you get your breath.” He put his arm around her under the water.
“I’m not all the way winded,” she protested, but by degrees she relaxed until he supported her whole weight, feeling her heart thumping against his palm, while she clung to the gunwale resting her bowed head upon her hands; and it was like he had been in a dark room and all of a sudden the lights had come on: simple, like that.
It was like one morning when he was in a bunch of hoboes riding a freight into San Francisco and the bulls had jumped them and they had had to walk in. Along the water front it was, and there were a lot of boats in the water, kind of rocking back and forth at anchor: he could see reflections of boats and of the piles of the wharves in the water, wavering back and forth; and after a while dawn had come up out of the smoke of the city, like a sound you couldn’t hear, and a lot of yellow and pink had come onto the water where the boats were rocking, and around the piles of the wharf little yellow lines seemed to come right up out of the water; and pretty soon there were gulls looking like they had pink and yellow feathers, slanting and wheeling around.
And it was like there was a street in a city, a street with a lot of trash in it, but pretty soon he was out of the street and in a place where trees were. It must be spring because the trees were not exactly bare, and yet they didn’t exactly have leaves on them, and there was a wind coming through the trees and he stopped and heard music somewhere; it was like he had just waked up and a wind with music in it was coming across green hills brave in a clean dawn. Simple, like that.
She moved at last against his arm. “Maybe I can climb in now. You better gimme a push, I guess.” His hand found her knee, slid down, and she raised her foot to
