He teetered, off balance, and leaned backwards onto the leg that was on firm sand. As he did things got even worse. Another surge, a curling, crashing breaker this time, rumbled down the channel toward them, and Claire and Ray jerked ferociously on the coat, dragging him up the bank and out of its way.
"John!" he shouted futilely, scrambling to his feet, safe himself but still able to feel the touch of his friend’s fingers on his own. They had been so agonizingly close…There was nothing he could do but watch, powerless and shaken, as the great swell of water swept by them, burying John for terrible, slow seconds.
"Look, he’s all right! He’s alive!" Ray blurted out when John’s head emerged at last from the settling water.
With his eyes tightly closed, his black hair matted and wet, and his cheeks puffed out from holding his breath, his head looked to Gideon like something that had been stuck on a pike on London Bridge, but after a moment he proved Ray right, sucking in a huge breath and opening his eyes.
"I think it’s time for plan B," he called weakly across the stream. The water, rising more and more swiftly, was lapping at his chin. He glanced apprehensively to his right, looking for the next surge.
And Gideon felt the first sick stab of real fear. What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to get John out before the next wave did him in? Goddamn him for being dumb enough to step in the crap just when they were almost home!
Panting with frustration, practically hopping from foot to foot, he looked wildly around for a stick, a pole, an idea, but of course there was nothing. Ray and Claire stood slumped together, with no suggestions, still pointlessly hanging on to the dripping black coat. John, God damn him, just sat there uselessly, like a bump on a log, up to his neck, with nothing to say. One more surge and-
At the sibilant, rumbling murmur all of them looked sharply up to see the dull, brownish-gray breaker, nudging its scud of flotsam and yellow foam before it, roll smoothly and evilly down the channel towards them, so high this time that it spilled over the sides.
And Gideon had an idea. He ran quickly upstream along the bank, towards the oncoming breaker, only managing to get in four or five strides before pulling level with it. Then, pushing off against the edge of the bank, he launched himself into it in a shallow dive angled back downstream, in
John’s direction. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Claire and Ray staring openmouthed at him.
What he had in mind was to grab John-to more or less tackle him underwater-as the powerful wave swept Gideon downstream, and use the combined impetus of the surge and his own weight to pluck John out of the sand. Not much of an idea in the first place, and half-formed at best, but it was all he could think of, and under the circumstances it wasn’t bad.
Or it wouldn’t have been, except for two things. First, his hurried dive landed him not in the billowing crown of the swell but just in front of it, under the heavy, overhanging curl. Instead of being buoyed forward in John’s direction, he was pounded by the crashing curtain of water and forced downward, sprawling and contorted, to bump hard against the gritty bottom and get most of the wind knocked out of him. Then, before he could raise his head to the surface and snatch a breath, the fat part of the swell sent him somersaulting forward, muddled and strangling, close to panicking because John too was underwater by now, with his legs gripped fast in the quicksand, and Gideon couldn’t see where he was. There would be only one chance to grab for him, and if he missed, then-
He tried to force open his eyes but the lancing pain of the salt water pinched them shut. Bursting with the effort to hold his breath, unable to tell up from down, he flailed his arms and even his legs ferociously, desperately hoping to catch hold of John as he swept by. And miraculously, he tumbled squarely into him.
It was at this point that the second thing went wrong. When the breaker had borne down on him, John had instinctively twisted his face away from it and hadn’t seen Gideon dive in. So when some hideous creature dragged from the deep by the tide clutched at him from behind with its thrashing tentacles, he naturally swung his fist blindly into the mass of it as hard as he could.
The punch caught Gideon just under the diaphragm and drove the stopped-up air out of his mouth in an explosion of bubbles. Convulsively, he tightened his grip, only to be hit again, this time in the chest, and then, clumsily and with diminishing force, in the side of the neck. With his head exploding from the need for oxygen, he involuntarily sucked in a throatful of seawater, vomiting it up at once with the last residue of breath in his lungs. He had to come up for air, if he could figure out which way up was, but if he let go of John…
The lazily rotating pinpoints of light told him that he was losing consciousness, could no longer hold on against the overpowering pull of the tidal surge. He began to lose touch with where he was, what he was doing. The excruciating fire in his chest receded to some more distant dimension. His mind sagged and drifted, and he must have begun to suck in a breath because salt water suddenly burned in his nose. He stopped himself from taking it into his lungs but this time he couldn’t expel it; it pooled at the back of his throat like an icy jelly. He was dimly aware that his legs had been yanked behind him by the full force of the surge, so that he was stretched out horizontally below the surface of the water, like a flag in a windstorm, hanging on with rigid and unfeeling hands to the slick, spongy material of John’s collar.
It was time to let go, to give in to the tide and be swept away, time to leave John to die in peace, but still he held on, unable to order his stony fingers to unclench. Vaguely he realized that John was still struggling weakly, pulling at Gideon’s wrist. Angered, Gideon shook the collar feebly. Why couldn’t the stupid bastard let him die in peace? John struggled harder, and Gideon, foggily enraged, shook him harder in return as a new tidal surge pulled powerfully at them.
There was the sensation of a stopper popping from a bottle, and then he was tumbling again, his hands still knotted in John’s collar, and John was tumbling and bouncing along with him. Dreamily, not understanding what was happening, he understood nevertheless that he had done what he had tried to do. When he opened his mouth to exult, the waiting seawater rushed in, and the swirling, mushrooming blackness followed after it, pouring down his throat and expanding to fill his ballooning insides.
"I think he’s all right," Claire’s worried voice said above him.
"Of course I’m all right," Gideon said irritatedly. Or was he? He was on his back in two or three inches of water, with his head raised and his cheek lying against cold, wet cloth. Claire’s dress, he realized. His head was on her lap. What was going on? Were they still in the bay? Had he had an accident? Fallen? Abruptly he remembered and pushed himself to his elbows.
"John-"
"Right here," John said. "I’m okay." He was kneeling at Gideon’s side. "Thanks for coming in to get me, Doc," he said awkwardly. "Sorry about belting you."
"Think nothing of it," Gideon said woozily. "Anytime."
"How’re you feeling?"
"Fine." And he was, more or less. Aching throat, queasiness, mild nausea, muscles as weak as a baby’s and still quivering, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. "How long was Iout?"
"No more than a couple of minutes. I’m not sure if you were ever completely out."
It had felt like a week. "How did I get up here? Did you pull me out?"
John shook his head. "Couldn’t. We washed up on a rise in a couple of feet of water. I tried to drag you out, but I didn’t have the strength. I couldn’t even pull myself out. All I could do was get your head out of the water. We would have just laid there and bought it on the next surge if Ray hadn’t dragged us out. Just in time too."