Audiobook Dictation: “He would have been drowned, the…”

He would have been drowned, the breath battered clean out of him, in half a minute more, had he maintained the hopelessly unequal struggle. Once more he half emerged, filled his gasping lungs, and pounded onward desperately, half flying and half swimming. It was a mongrel method of progression, in which he was singularly expert. Immediately over his outstretched gleaming head flew the hawk. Where the waves for an instant sank, they came closer,--but not quite within grasping reach. The marauder from the upper air was waiting till his quarry should reach less turbulent waters. A few yards further on, the torrent fell seething over a long ledge into a pool of brief quiet. Immediately beyond the lip of the ledge the hawk lifted his wings high over his back and struck downward, so that his talons went deep into the water. But water was all they clutched. The wily drake had plunged with the plunge of the fall itself, and was now darting onward at a safe depth.