Afraid that the act of hauling us in would detach her from the stick, I grasped it firmly with one hand, and clasped her around the waist with the other. Her frame quivered with the cold and the terror of her situation. As all persons in peril of drowning are apt to do, she was disposed to cling to me.
"Don't be afraid," said I to her. "You are safe now."
"Save me!" gasped she, hardly loud enough to be heard.
I felt the rope cutting my waist as Sim jerked and tugged at it with all his strength. There was no lack of zeal on his part, but if anything had depended upon coolness and skill, we might both have been drowned. I kept a firm hold upon my helpless charge, and managed to keep her head above the water, though my own was dragged under several times by the clumsiness of my willing friend.
Sim pulled and hauled with energy, if not with skill. When he abandoned the steering oar, the raft began to whirl, and thus to complicate his labor. I caught a glance of the simple-minded fellow, as the craft turned, and I heard him yell, "Hookie!" He was nonplussed by the change of the raft; but he did not know enough to follow it round upon the outside. I am not sure this freak of the current did not save us from a calamity, for as it revolved, and the rope became tangled in the platform, we were thrown against the raft, thus saving my helpmate half his toil. Fortunately the end of the stick on which I floated struck the logs first, and broke the force of what might otherwise have been a stunning blow.
"Tie the rope, Sim!" I called to my assistant, who was now on the other side of the raft.
"O, Buckland!" cried Flora, as she came out of the house and gazed at me with an expression of intense pain.
"Hookie!" ejaculated Sim, rushing to the point where I had seized hold of the raft.
[Illustration: AFTER THE EXPLOSION.--Page 221.]
He stood there, jumping up and down on both feet, bewildered and helpless.
In the water, struggling for his own or another's life, a man's stock in trade consists mainly of breath. Without that he can't do much, and generally he fails for the want of it; not when life deserts him, but when he might, by an economical use of it, have been able to save himself. I had been in the water enough to learn this lesson, and to be competent to advise all my young friends, in the moment of peril, to refrain from useless and unreasonable struggling, for that wastes the breath, and fritters away the strength.