EVERETT, Wash. — A 13-year-old boy is being praised for his heroic actions after rescuing an unconscious child from the depths of Silver Lake on Tuesday afternoon.

Gauge Bryant was playing on the dock with his cousin around 3 p.m. when a panicked mother approached, searching for her missing 11-year-old son. The boy had slipped beneath the surface of the lake and had been underwater for as long as six minutes.

"It can just happen in a split second and you don't know what to do," said Bryant.

But Bryant did know what to do. He recalled seeing something strange below the dock just moments earlier and immediately dove in to investigate. About 10 feet below the surface, he found the boy motionless and tangled in lake vegetation.

“I dove in and I saw him cradled underneath the dock and near some seaweed,” Bryant said. “His face was like blue. His lips were blue and purple.”

A wrestler and basketball player, Bryant said his first instinct was clear: “Get him out right now. I was terrified.”

He swam down to the lake bottom, lifted the child with one arm and began the difficult ascent back to the surface while struggling to keep hold of the boy.

"I'm holding the kid with one arm around his chest and I look up. I just see water right above me and I see people looking down," Bryant said. "So I pushed myself off the lake floor with my legs and started swimming with one hand. He slipped from my arm and I had to go back and grab him."

Once at the surface, others helped pull the boy onto the dock, where three off-duty nurses began CPR. The boy had been submerged for an estimated four to six minutes.

Bryant credited the nurses with saving the child’s life.

"I don't see myself as the hero," said Bryant. "I see the people who were able to clear the water out of his lungs and do CPR and bring him back as the heroes."

The experience has stayed with Bryant.

“I cannot get the image out of my head of him just sitting cradled under the dock with seaweed wrapped around and stuff like that,” he said.

Despite the trauma, Bryant hopes to connect with the boy once he recovers.

“I want to contact him and be able to know him, hang out with him, play games with him,” he said. “I want to be friends.”

The boy remains in critical but stable condition at Providence Regional Medical Center.

The Everett Fire Department recognized Bryant with a department shirt and challenge coin for his actions.

“What he did is pretty amazing,” said department spokesperson Rachael Doniger. “Not only just to get involved, but the human side of understanding there was a child that needed to be rescued and he jumped in to help. We’re very proud of him.”