A QUOTATION
“Do help him, Tom!” cried Ruth Fielding, and she started for the spot where the man and the skiff were sinking.
Tom cast aside his sweater, kicked his sneakers off, and plunged into the tide. Ruth was quite as lightly dressed as Tom; but she saw that he could do all that was necessary.
That was, to bring the frightened man ashore. This “hermit” as they called him, was certainly very much afraid of the water.
He splashed a good deal, and Tom had to speak sharply to keep him from getting a strangle-hold about his own neck.
“Jimminy! but that was a mean trick,” panted Tom, when he got ashore with the fisherman. “Somebody pulled the plug out of the bottom of the skiff and first he knew, he was going down.”
“It is a shame,” agreed Ruth, looking at the victim of the joke curiously.
He was a thin-featured, austere looking man, scrupulously shaven, but with rather long hair that had quite evidently been dyed. Now that it was plastered to his crown by the salt water (for he had been completely immersed more than once in his struggle with Tom Cameron) his hair was shown to be quite thin and of a greenish tinge at the roots.
The shock of being dipped in the sea so unexpectedly was plainly no small one for the hermit. He stood quite unsteadily on the strand, panting and sputtering.
“Young dogs! No respect for age and ability in this generation. I might have been drowned.”