“Hi! Hi!” shouted Jim in his throat. A thousand wicked voices of the storm answered him; the cruel hands of the flood clutched him. He swept on, closed his eyes, and in his terrified, dry little mind thought:
“I reckon that’s about all of me!”
And then, somehow, miraculously, he too was caught and held. True, the waters were pounding him, he was smothering with the spray, but at least he was not being tossed over the brink. He thrust out desperate hands and clutched the obstruction. It was a tree in full leaf, which had been swept from the upper fall and had somehow snarled there on the rocks. It was what had saved Mac, and at the end of a frightened, determined struggle, Jim, standing ankle deep, in the red mud of the road, knew that it had saved him too. And there, at his hand, trembling, but safe, was good old Mac.
It seemed strange to Jim that his throat could be so dry when his very skin was soaking and the heavens were emptying torrents all about him, but it was all he could do to shriek out: “Hi! Oh, Hi!”
No voice answered. “He’s gone,” sobbed Jim. “He’s gone over the fall! Oh, what shall I do?”
But just then above the road came a sharp voice in his ears.
“Shut up there, ninny! I’m here all right.”
“Where? Where?”
“Where you’ll step on me if you don’t watch out. I guess my arm’s broke, Jim. Nannie went down at the ford, but she got out and ran away from me. Piked for home, I guess. I hit something, and crawled out, and then I sort o’ went to sleep. One arm’s acting funny—it won’t work.”
“Oh, Hi,” cried Jim, “never mind if your arm is broke; that can be mended. But if you’d gone over—”