?"

"Just that. They used to think the lungs were a tank."

"Murchison was saying that people drowned because they couldn't get
oxygen. Isn't there oxygen in water?"

"Av coorse there is," the Irishman replied. "But ye've got to have the
gills of a fish to use it. Annyhow, a man's got warm blood an' a fish
has cold. It takes a lot of oxygen to get a man's blood warm. An' if he
doesn't get it, he dies.

"Ye see, Eric," he continued, "that's why ye've got to go on workin'
over a drowned man. Ye can't tell how badly he's poisoned. An' it's
honest I am in tellin' ye that I think we've got a chance in there."

"You do?"

"I do that," was the cheery answer. "There's no tellin'."

Again came that cry from the station, a cry whose very repetition made
it all the more nerve-racking,

"I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save
myself!"

Eric shivered. There was something gruesome in the monotony of the same
words over and over again. The noises on the beach died down. Several of
the men, who did not live at the station-house, went to their cottages.
The boy gave a jump when he heard a step behind him and saw the old
doctor standing there.

The night was very still. Nothing could be heard but the roar of the
surf on the beach. Eric, who was imaginative, thought that the surf
seemed to be triumphing in having snatched another life. Feeling sure
that the doctor would understand him, the boy turned and said,

"Doctor, shall we be able to beat out the sea?"

The Highland imagination of the doctor instantly caught the lad's
meaning.

"You've heard it, too!" he said. "Many and many's the time I've thought
the sea was skreeling in triumph when a drowned man was brought ashore.
But I've snatched a many back."

"Will you--" began the boy.

"Doctor!" came a cry from within.

"Well?" he answered eagerly, stepping to the door.

"I thought I caught a breath!"

The doctor's keen eyes glinted as he knelt beside the prostrate figure.

Nine, ten, eleven times the weight of the life-saver was brought forward
and released. At the twelfth, there was a slight respiration.

"Did you see, Doctor?" he cried, pausing in his work.

"What the mischief are you stopping for?" was the doctor's impatient
answer. Then he added, "You're doing splendidly, Murchison; just keep it
up!"

Five more minutes passed without a single sign. Both men had begun to
feel that possibly they had been mistaken, when there was