A swarm of rowboats was already picking up survivors from the water, and the “Northern Belle,” sure now of all the traffic there would be that morning, slowed down and stood by until her decks were crowded with the wounded, burnt, or half-drowned sufferers.
Dr. Ware found a rowboat to take him out to the Belle, still waiting in mid-stream. “Come with me, Rhoda,” he said. “You can help.”
When the girl cast her eyes over the deck, as she stepped on board, she shrank back, appalled and sickened by the ghastly sight. But with a tightening of the lips she drew herself together and went to work. Presently, as she was trying to quiet an hysterical woman, her father came close and drew her aside.
“Rhoda,” he said in a low voice, “Jeff Delavan has just been brought on board.” She turned pale and swayed toward him and he grasped her arm. “Steady, girl,” he encouraged. “He’s alive, but unconscious. As far as I can see now I don’t think he is seriously injured. Your mother would probably want him taken to our house.”
She straightened, with a quick grip upon herself. “Yes, father, of course she would—and I, too. Oh, he shall go nowhere else!”
CHAPTER X
So it happened that when Jefferson Delavan came back to consciousness Mrs. Ware was bending over him, extreme anxiety in her look. Dr. Ware had found that his manifest injuries consisted in a broken rib and some burns upon his arms. But an accidental blow while clinging to a plank in the water had rendered him unconscious and he had been rescued barely in time to prevent him from slipping off and sinking to his death. Over the possible results of this blow the physician was anxious. Everything would depend, he had told his wife and Rhoda, upon how the young man came out of the oblivion. He had warned them that it might be with wandering wits, and in that case only time could tell how severe, possibly even how permanent, would be the results of the accident.
Delavan stirred and moaned slightly and Mrs. Ware, bending over him with her fingers upon his pulse, saw that his eyelids fluttered. “Rhoda!” she called, her voice a-tremble and sinking to a whisper, “he’s coming to!” Rhoda, leaning across the foot of the bed upon her clenched hands, was watching his face with intent eyes.
“Come and stand beside me!” her mother went on with quivering lips. “If he shouldn’t know me I—I can’t stand it!” Rhoda took his wrist from her shaking hand, pressed firm fingers upon his pulse and threw her other arm with a little soothing caress around the elder woman’s shoulders. Suddenly the patient’s eyes flew open and with a bewildered stare looked up into Mrs. Ware’s pale and anxious face.
“Jeff, dear boy, don’t you know me?” she begged. His blank, unrecognizing gaze rested upon her for a silent minute, then wandered on and fell upon her companion.