The board was narrow, the man, though weighing less than a hundred and fifty, was awkward with his weight and grabbed clumsily at Dick’s head.
When, with a last wrenching effort of his back, Dick stood upright, the board slid sidewise and the pair toppled into the sea.
In the boat Rosemary exclaimed:
“Wonderful!
They almost had it.”
But as they came back to the swimmers Nicole watched for a sight of Dick’s face. It was full of annoyance as she expected, because he had done the thing with ease only two years ago.
The second time he was more careful.
He rose a little testing the balance of his burden, settled down again on his knee; then, grunting
“Alley oop!” began to rise—but before he could really straighten out, his legs suddenly buckled and he shoved the board away with his feet to avoid being struck as they fell off.
This time when the Baby Gar came back it was apparent to all the passengers that he was angry.
“Do you mind if I try that once more?” he called, treading water.
“We almost had it then.”
“Sure.
Go ahead.”
To Nicole he looked white-around-the-gills, and she cautioned him:
“Don’t you think that’s enough for now?”
He didn’t answer.
The first partner had had plenty and was hauled over the side, the Mexican driving the motor boat obligingly took his place.
He was heavier than the first man.
As the boat gathered motion, Dick rested for a moment, belly-down on the board.
Then he got beneath the man and took the rope, and his muscles flexed as he tried to rise.
He could not rise.
Nicole saw him shift his position and strain upward again but at the instant when the weight of his partner was full upon his shoulders he became immovable.
He tried again— lifting an inch, two inches—Nicole felt the sweat glands of her forehead open as she strained with him—then he was simply holding his ground, then he collapsed back down on his knees with a smack, and they went over, Dick’s head barely missing a kick of the board.
“Hurry back!” Nicole called to the driver; even as she spoke she saw him slide under water and she gave a little cry; but he came up again and turned on his back, and “Chateau” swam near to help.
It seemed forever till the boat reached them but when they came alongside at last and Nicole saw Dick floating exhausted and expressionless, alone with the water and the sky, her panic changed suddenly to contempt.
“We’ll help you up, Doctor. . . . Get his foot . . . all right . . . now altogether. . . .”
Dick sat panting and looking at nothing.
“I knew you shouldn’t have tried it,” Nicole could not help saying.
“He’d tired himself the first two times,” said the Mexican.
“It was a foolish thing,” Nicole insisted.
Rosemary tactfully said nothing.
After a minute Dick got his breath, panting,
“I couldn’t have lifted a paper doll that time.”
An explosive little laugh relieved the tension caused by his failure.
They were all attentive to Dick as he disembarked at the dock.
But Nicole was annoyed—everything he did annoyed her now.
She sat with Rosemary under an umbrella while Dick went to the buffet for a drink—he returned presently with some sherry for them.
“The first drink I ever had was with you,” Rosemary said, and with a spurt of enthusiasm she added,
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you and KNOW you’re all right.
I was worried—” Her sentence broke as she changed direction “that maybe you wouldn’t be.”
“Did you hear I’d gone into a process of deterioration?”
“Oh, no.
I simply—just heard you’d changed.
And I’m glad to see with my own eyes it isn’t true.”
“It is true,” Dick answered, sitting down with them.
“The change came a long way back—but at first it didn’t show.
The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks.”
“Do you practise on the Riviera?” Rosemary demanded hastily.
“It’d be a good ground to find likely specimens.”