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all. When he finally came out at the foot of the path, he saw Bantry had turned the boat over somehow and was thrashing around a good way from it. You could tell by one quick look he didn’t know how to swim a stroke. And what kind of a fool would overset a flat-bottomed boat, anyway? He wasn’t over the deep part of the lake; if he had been, the way things fell out, he would probably be there yet.
    Jackson took off his knee pads, which he hadn’t been able to get rid of while he was running. He took off his shoes and some more of his clothes and waded out into the lake. The dogs ran up and down the shoreline barking like crazy, and now and then one of them would put a paw in the water, but they were not dogs that liked to swim. Without thinking, Jackson swam straight out to where Bantry was at and laid a hold to him, only Bantry got a better hold on him first, and dragged him right on under. It was not anything he meant to be doing, exactly, just how any drowning man behaves. He was trying to climb out of the lake over Jackson’s back, but Jackson was going down underneath him, getting lightheaded, for no matter what he tried he couldn’t raise his head clear for a breath. Then it came to him he had better swim for the bottom. When he dove down he felt Bantry come loose from him and he kept going down till he was free, then out a ways, swimming as far as he could under water before he came back up.
    He was tired then, and his banged ribs had started to hurt from that long time he’d been down and holding his breath. For a minute or two he had to lie in a dead-man’s float to rest, and then he raised his head and started treading water, slow. It was a cloudy day, no sun at all, and he could feel the cold cutting through to his bones. The surface of the lake was black as oil. Bantry was still struggling about twenty feet from him, but he was near done in by that time. He stared at Jackson, his eyes rolling white. Jackson trod water and looked right back at him until Bantry gave it up and slid down under the lake.
    Ripples were widening out from the place where Bantry’s head went down, and Peter Jackson kept on treading water. He counted up to twenty-five before he dove. It was ten feet deep, maybe twelve, at the point where they were at, colder yet along the bottom and dark with silt. He didn’t find Bantry the first dive he made, though he stayed down until his head was pounding. It took him a count of thirty to get the breath back for another try, and he was starting to think he might have miscalculated. But on the second time he found him and hauled him back up. Bantry was not putting up any fight now; he was not any more than a dead weight. Jackson got him in a cross-chest carry and swam him into the shore.
    The dogs were going wild there on the bank, yapping and jumping up and down. Jackson dumped Bantry face down on the gravel and swatted the dogs away. He knelt down and started mashing Bantry’s shoulders. There was plenty of water coming out of him, but he was cold and not moving a twitch, and Jackson was thinking he had miscalculated sure enough when Bantry shuddered and coughed and puked a little and then raised up on his elbows. Jackson got off of him and watched him start to breathe. After a little bit, Bantry’s eyes came clear.
    “You’da let me drown,” Bantry said. “You’da just let me …”
    “You never left me much of a choice,” Jackson said.
    “You was just setting there watching me drown,” Bantry said. He sat up one joint at a time and then let his head drop down and hang over his folded knees. The cut above his eye had opened back up and was bleeding some. In a minute, he started to cry.
    Peter Jackson never had seen anybody carrying on the way Bantry was, not some pretty near grown man, at least. He didn’t feel any too sorry for Bantry, but it was unpleasant watching him cry like that. It was like watching a baby cry when it can’t tell you what’s the matter, and there ain’t