She was looking straight at him, but obviously she saw nothing and recognised no one.

Suddenly she leaned her right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the railing, then her left and threw herself into the canal.

The filthy water parted and swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an instant later the drowning woman floated to the surface, moving slowly with the current, her head and legs in the water, her skirt inflated like a balloon over her back.
"A woman drowning! A woman drowning!" shouted dozens of voices; people ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge people crowded about Raskolnikov, pressing up behind him.
"Mercy on it! it's our Afrosinya!" a woman cried tearfully close by.
"Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!" "A boat, a boat" was shouted in the crowd.

But there was no need of a boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off his great coat and his boots and rushed into the water.

It was easy to reach her: she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he caught hold of her clothes with his right hand and with his left seized a pole which a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman was pulled out at once.