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away again with a hissing sound; giants cudgeled her,
dwarfs nudged her; and black sea-beasts, part imp and part leviathan,
folded suddenly her body in theirs, raining upon her face blows like
the short slaps of a wet fin. The rain fell. The band played Barney
Google. "Trudie," roared the butcher, "if you git over
I'll let you take the roadster to bed with you." She was no nearer
the shore. For two hours, with truncheon legs that never stopped
kicking, with failing arms that beat on, she had been swimming in a
treadmill. The human will is an unknown quantity, but it has its
limitations. Another woman might have been beaten an hour ago.
Gertrude Ederle might be able to keep swimming for an hour more. But
surely before long the courage that kept her warm would go out like a
lamp, she would give a brief, cloudy call from the water, and a
life-preserver would swoop out for her. Already Trainer Burgess had
started his whispering. And then, abruptly, the girl called. It was a
critical moment. Weakening now meant certain defeat, and at the sound
of her voice everyone on the tug, even the musicians, pressed to the
rail, straining his eyes through the dusk of black waters. But Gertrude
Ederle had not cried because she was tired. Suddenly, deliciously at
her back she had felt the lifting current that would sweep her ashore.
It was then—not later—that she felt her triumph. She felt as if she
could swim to China, to Hawaii or to the cottage in Highlands, N. J.,
where her mother was soon to tell pressmen about her character. She
could see her mother bobbing in a rocker, hear her voice go dreamily
on: "Gertrude is just a plain home girl. . . . She does not smoke
or drink. She does not go out with young men, except just once in a
while. . . . No, she has no sweetheart . . . that I know of. . . ."
The pale cliffs of England, from Kingsdown to Dover, blazed with light.
Bonfires were flaming there as in the days when the Jutes and Saxons
welcomed their black sea-rovers home from war. People pranced on the
beach shouting her name, they waded into the surf and tried to help her
out. Gertrude Ederle pushed them aside. Smiling, she reached down, and
felt the sand under her feet.
