“And now you have saved my life again.”
“I am glad I was able to do something for you, for you seemed to be in a bad way.”
“I should think I was! If you had been a minute later it would have been the last of Jim McGovern, and I tell you, Dick Halliard, he was in no shape to die.”
No person escaping death by such a close call could throw off at once the moral effect of his rescue. The bad youth was humbled, frightened, and repentant. He was standing in the presence of him who had twice been the instrument of saving his life in a brief space of time, and that, too, after McGovern had tried to do him an injury.
“I don’t know whether you can forgive me,” he said, in the meekest of tones, “but I beg your pardon all the same.”
“I have no feeling against you,” replied Dick, “and though you sought to do me an injury, you inflicted the most on yourself; but,” added the young hero, starting up, “where are Bob Budd and Tom Wagstaff?”
“Heaven only knows! They must be drowned,” replied McGovern, glancing at the raging waters so near him with a shudder, as if he still feared they would reach and sweep him away.
“Where did you leave them? How did you become separated?”
“We were in our tent when we heard the waters coming. We felt we couldn’t help each other, and all made a break, some in one direction and some another. They must have been drowned, just as I would have been but for you.”
But what could he do to help them? He was standing as near to the torrent as he dare. It had already submerged the spot where the tent had been erected to the depth of twenty feet at least. Bob and Tom could not have stayed there had they wished, nor was there any means of reaching them.