When one is swimming in a great hurry minutes change to hours and yards
to miles, and to a small human speck in the ocean the sky overhead
appears like an immense arc. As the eyes of the human speck follow the
horizon line, many things seem to be happening in the circular zone
which girdles the whole world.
It was only an instant that Billie had turned her eyes away from
Timothy's head, and yet in that moment she saw first the shark, more
frightened than they were, making for the open sea; then a seagull
swooping down on the water. Then she saw Genevieve standing irresolutely
on the raft; next a line of sea, and finally the reckless stranger who
had enticed Timothy to race for the ball and left him to his fate. He
was still swimming desperately, as if a whole army of sharks was at his
heels.
"Coward," thought Billie, as she cut through the waves as neatly and
swiftly as the prow of a little ship. She was swimming on one side, far
down, making a wide circular motion with her right arm.
As she neared the struggling boy, she called out cheerfully:
"All right, Timothy. Keep up a minute. I'm almost there."
He tried to smile, and beat the water feebly in a last effort to save
himself. But when she was almost at arm's-length distance, he sank
again. Billie dived under, caught him by his stiff red hair and pulled
him to the surface.
Loungers on a beach are not apt to notice what is really going on among
the bathers. A man has been drowned in sight of a hundred spectators and
no one knew that anything had happened. So it was with the group of
people lying on the sand. They had not even looked seaward for ten
minutes, and were as oblivious to the fact that a struggle for life was
taking place in the water, as if they had been sitting in an inland
meadow.
Once again, Genevieve called weakly: "Help, help!" but her voice was
lost in the sound of the surf as it broke on the shore. Then, at last,
seeing she could not attract anybody's attention, she jumped into the
water and began swimming slowly out toward Timothy and Billie. But she
was frightened, and fright in deep water takes the form of a creeping,
all-pervading exhaustion. Once she turned and tried to go back to the
raft, but the strong current carried her along faster than she could
swim. It was all she could do now to keep her own head above water, and
she forgot Billie and Timothy and everything in the world but her
determination to stay on top.
In the meantime, Billie, with Timothy in tow, was also in the grip of
the current.
"Take your own time, Billie," she heard her own voice saying, and she
half smiled when she remembered how often she had heard her father use
those very words in the early days of her swimming. "I can't keep this
up forever," her thoughts continued, as her arm began to feel numb and
the pressure became almost unbearable.
It had not come into her head that she could let Timothy go and save
herself. Her father had had his own peculiar ideas in bringing up his
little daughter, and it was a very courageous heart that now thumped and
thumped in her athletic young frame. One hand still gripped Timothy's
hair while with the other she paddled gently and let herself drift
along. Hours seemed to pass. It was really only a few minutes. Billie
closed her eyes.
"I'm so tired, Papa," she whispered. "Don't think I'm a coward if I----"
Bump! Straight they drifted into something large and soft and yielding.
It was Mr. Duffy whose enormous frame was floating on the water like an
empty cask.
"Br-r-r!" he spluttered, as his head went under and came up again. It
was impossible to sink that vast bulk of human frame.
Billie had just sense enough to call out as he struggled to see what had
collided with him:
"Keep on floating--we're--almost--drowning."
"Hey, hey! Little girl, tired out, are you? Hold on tight. Why, you've
got a boy there."
"Yes," gurgled Billie. "He's about all--in--don't move--I must rest."
Timothy opened his eyes.
"Did I faint?" he asked in a weak, shaky voice.
"Something like it," called Mr. Duffy. "Hold on, boy, and don't talk."
At last Billie's arm was relieved of the weight which had grown so heavy
that she thought every moment it would break. But she had kept Timothy's
nose above the water line, and she breathed a sigh of satisfaction.
"What's that! What's that on my foot?" demanded Mr. Duffy, not daring to
move and unable to see over the hemisphere of his portly frame.
Billie looked up mechanically. In her relief and weariness, she had
really forgotten that Genevieve existed in the world, and there was her
new friend clinging desperately to the fat man's foot and breathing
hard.
Billy could hardly keep from laughing! What a funny picture they must
make to the people on shore: a big whale surrounded by small fry; or an
ocean liner being pushed seaward by three little tugs.
"It's just another tired swimmer," she answered at last.
Mr. Duffy's round, good-natured face wrinkled into a delightful smile.
"I seem to be a sort of general life-preserver," he exclaimed. "Do the
people on land think we are playing a game? Why doesn't somebody come
out and help this poor boy before we float on out to sea?"
"I'm awfully sorry, but we're too tired to call for help," said Billie,
apologetically.
"Of course you are, little girl. But you've done a brave thing, so don't
reproach yourself and don't be frightened any of you. I'm going to send
out one of my chest notes."
With that, Mr. Duffy roared out "Help, help!" in such deep bass tones
that the ocean fairly rocked with the sound. Just as he called, Billie
noticed a girl run up to the group of people on the beach and point
toward the sea. It was Georgiana Paxton, she was almost certain. Two men
in white flannels, taking off their coats as they ran, dashed into the
surf. As they swam, they appeared like two great white fish leaping out
of the water. Presently they came alongside the human flotilla and
swimming to the other side of Mr. Duffy's huge frame, paused for breath.
"What's the matter?" asked one.
"Matter?" cried Mr. Duffy with half-comic irritation. "Let go of me. Do
you think I'm the strong Turk who lifts a dozen people at once? There's
a poor boy would have drowned if it hadn't been for this brave young
lady, and there's another young lady about to go under, and you sitting
on the beach playing mumbly-peg when human life is at stake! If I hadn't
been an animated cork there'd have been three drownings this morning.
Get busy and look alive."
"I'm all right," said Billie, as one of the young men swam toward her.
"Look after the others please."
It was Genevieve and Timothy who were towed ashore while Billie and Mr.
Duffy slowly followed the rescuing party, swimming side by side and
chatting as if they had been old friends.
"I'm glad there's a happy ending to this little story," gurgled the fat
man, moving easily along in the water like a man walking on shore.
"I am, too," answered Billie, pillowing her cheek on a green wave and
propelling herself gently toward shore. She felt as if she could swim
forever now; so much has the state of mind to do with swimming.
"You are a brave girl," went on Mr. Duffy. "How far had you towed the
boy?"
"I don't know. Not as far as it seemed, I suppose. The current kept us
going. All I had to do was to hold his head above water."
"Wasn't he the boy who raced for the rubber ball?"
"Yes."
"What became of the other fellow, the one who threw the ball," demanded
Mr. Duffy, looking out seaward as if he expected to see him also
struggling in the waves.
"He was frightened at a shark and swam in. I suppose he thought Timothy
was coming, too. But he needn't have made such a fuss. The shark was one
of the scary kind."
"The low contemptible coward! Did he leave you to look after that
drowning boy?"
"He didn't know Timothy was drowning, you see," said Billie, trying to
be just.
But they had reached the shore now and there was no time to argue about
it. A crowd of people had surrounded Timothy, who was still weak and
exhausted. Billie and Mr. Duffy hurried up the beach to the bath houses.
"Would you know that cowardly fellow again if you were to see him?" he
asked, when they had reached the pavilion.
"No," she answered, "I never saw anything but the back of his head when
he swam ashore."
Nancy appeared at the bath-house door. She had been dressing during the
last fifteen minutes and had missed "Timothy's drowning," as the girls
always called it afterwards.
"Oh, Billie," she cried to her friend who was hastening toward her, "I
have just had such a fright!"
"I hoped you had missed it, Nancy," interrupted Billie.
"Then you saw it, too?"
"Saw it? I was in it."
"In the fight?" demanded Nancy.
"We are talking about different things, Nancy. What is it you saw?"
"I saw that terrible old English lady, what's-her-name, Mrs.
Paxton-Steele, beat a boy with her stick! She took him by the arm and
beat him well across the back, and called him 'Low, dastardly coward,'
and he howled like a whipped dog, and when I said 'Oh, don't,' she
turned on me and I thought she was going to hit me with her stick, too."
"That must have been the boy who threw the ball," cried Billie. "I'm
glad some one punished him. What did he look like?"
"How could I tell? He was all dripping wet in a bathing-suit, and his
face was turned away."
In a few words and with very modest allusions concerning her connection
with the saving of Timothy Peppercorn, Billie described the accident to
Nancy.
"That is the reason why I asked you what the boy looked like, Nancy. I
just wanted to see which of all the men in this hotel he was," Billie
added, after she had finished the story.
"Oh, Billie," cried her friend, putting her arms around Billie's neck,
"you are the bravest, finest girl in the whole world."
"But it was that nice fat Mr. Duffy who saved us all, child. Go hug
him."
"Don't belittle your brave deeds," said Nancy, "and don't try to excuse
that cowardly man who called out 'sharks!'"
As the two girls disappeared into the pavilion, a young man about
seventeen emerged from one of the alleys. He was tall and well-built
with handsome, regular features and brown hair, but there was an angry
flush on his face and a snarl on his weak, rather effeminate mouth. He
did not leave the pavilion, but waited until Nancy and Billie came out
of the bath-house, and as they walked arm in arm down the corridor, he
took a long look at their two faces and followed slowly after them, his
hands in his pockets.
"Little cats!" he ejaculated, as he turned toward the hotel, "I'll get
even with them yet."
Miss Campbell and the other girls were sitting in big wicker chairs on
the piazza. They, too, had heard nothing of Timothy's drowning, and were
laughing and chatting together while they absorbed iced fruit drinks
through long straws.
"My dear children," cried Miss Campbell, "how long you have been. Here
are some delicious lemonades especially ordered for us by that
mysterious individual, Mr. Ignatius Donahue. I really wish he would come
forth from his hiding-place. He reminds me of an attentive ghost."