“Joe! Joe!” came out of the darkness. “I can’t hold on! I can’t hold on!”
“Yah, you young idgit!” roared the sailor. “You must!”
“I can’t, Joe—I can’t!” cried Rodd faintly, and there was a gurgling sputtering sound as if the water had washed over him.
“Oh–h!” groaned Joe. “Don’t I tell you you must! Hold on by your arms and legs—your eyelids. Stick your teeth into the branch. We are a-coming, my lad.—Oh my! what a lie!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a despairing tone, “Can any one of you get up again’ the stream to where he is?”
“No!” came in a deep murmur. “If we go down we shall be washed away.”
“Same here,” groaned Joe. “I’m a-holding on with the water right up to the middle, and just about ready to be washed off. I can’t stir. Oh, do one of you try and save the poor dear lad! I wish I was dead, I do!”
“Joe!” came faintly.
“Ay, ay, my lad!”
“Tell Uncle Paul—”
The words ended in a half-suffocated wailing cry, and almost the next moment there was a tremendous splashing of water, and the snapping of a good-sized branch, followed by sounds as of a struggle going on upon the surface of the rushing stream as it lapped and hissed amongst the tangled boughs and twigs.