Now his feet scrambled for the mud until he found himself within his depth and able to stand, bringing her head into the dark night with him. He stopped and gulped air to fuel his fight to gain the sloping bank. Rising until the cut-grass rattled at his ears, he fell backward into the shallows, backpedaling up the bank, pulling Colette out, turning her on her stomach and pressing her back. He stuck his finger into her mouth and felt water run from her in a gush. Turning her over, he tried to bring her back, dreading to feel for a pulse, not wanting to waste time, even for that. He breathed into her several times, but she remained limp and still. On the last breath, he thought he smelled copper. Running his hands over her face, he felt that she was sticky with blood. The thought that she might have been hit by the propeller struck him like a stone, but there was no time for panic. He began compressions on her chest, interspersed with breaths, praying while he was doing this, without even realizing it, as though prayer was an element of rescue, as necessary as effort and fear. Giddy with exhaustion, he worked on feebly for a long time, until his arms started to fail. He straightened up from the waist and spread his hands to the weeds, feeling a catbrier behind him and running his forearm along it to wake himself, the thorns grating like saw teeth over his skin. He put his arms down again into the dark, unable to find her face for a long moment. He breathed into the rubbery mouth, compressed her chest, rolled her over, grabbed her belt and raised it taut, then struck her back with an open palm, determined to keep trying as long as he could stay conscious, thankful that he was blind and could not be distracted by the sight of her.

Colette was unyielding and dead in his hands. Again, he breathed into her, but her mouth was a limber slit, and feeling her slack lips under his made him pray again. He pressed her until he thought her ribs would crack and breathed until there was no more air left in him. He heard only a little catching noise in her throat, and he stopped to listen as he would to a far-off steam whistle. A narrow hiss ran from her mouth, his own breath coming out to mock him. Then he imagined he heard a little air go in. He bent down and gave her a gentle breath, and she returned one watery sigh of her own making.