Just then, a gentleman came down the stairs from the boiler-deck, in two jumps, and ran quickly to the side. “Who is it?” he exclaimed.
“Georgie Ackerman!” replied a dozen voices, in concert.
“And he can’t swim a stroke!” cried the gentleman, throwing off his coat and hat. “Neither can I; but I will save him or go down with him. There he is! I see his head!”
Bob saw it, too, and in an instant afterward he was in the water beside it. Securing a firm hold of the man’s long hair, he raised his head from the water so that he could breathe, and swam with him away from the steamer. He knew he was in no danger of being drawn under the wheel, for it was working backward, and that, in some degree, counteracted the force of the current. The real peril to be apprehended was, that the steamer, which was rapidly swinging around, might run over him, and force him down under the water. In order to avoid this, Bob, who had all his wits about him, swam with his utmost speed until he was out of the influence of the eddy caused by the wheel, and then he struck the current, and was carried down the stream at the rate of four miles an hour.
The man floundered and struggled desperately at first, making blind clutches at the empty air, and trying to turn about so that he could take hold of Bob, and it was all the latter could do to manage him. But after he had recovered his breath, wiped the water from his face, and brushed the hair out of his eyes, he became calmer, and gave Bob the first opportunity he had had to see what he looked like. The steamer’s torch had by this time been transferred from the starboard to the port side of the forecastle, and by the aid of the light it threw out Bob saw that the person he had rescued was not a man, but a boy about his own age. He felt much easier after he made this discovery. He was afraid of a drowning man, but he did not doubt his ability to manage almost any boy of his own size in the water.
“Say, you!” exclaimed Bob, shifting his grasp from the boy’s hair to his collar, and giving him a little shake to stir up his ideas.
“All right!” was the reply. “Who are you? Anybody I know? I don’t recognise your voice.”
Bob was so surprised at the calmness with which the boy spoke, that he did not answer immediately.
“I hope you have got a good hold of me, whoever you are,” continued the boy; “for if you let go I shall go down like a chunk of lead. I can’t swim.”
“Well, can you understand what I say to you?”