“Where?” asked Slim, sitting up.
“Out there.” Katherine pointed her finger.
Slim looked in the direction she pointed. “I don’t see anything.”
“It seems to have gone under,” said Katherine, searching the surface for the thing she had seen the moment before.
“There it is again,” she said excitedly. “It just came up again.
“Slim!” she shrieked, springing to her feet and dragging him up with her. “It’s–it’s a person, and it looks like a woman. It’s red. A woman in a red dress. She’s drowning. She went down when she disappeared and now she’s come up again. Hurry! The little launch! Come on! Hurry!”
She dragged Slim down the path so fast it was a miracle they both didn’t go head over heels, untied the launch from the landing and sent it flying across the lake in the direction of the drowning woman. Katherine could run the launch as well as Uncle Teddy himself. Slim, panting and speechless, hung 78 over the side trying to keep his eye on the red spot in the shimmery green water.
“She’s got one arm thrown up for help,” he cried above the thumping of the engine. Slim was so softhearted he could not bear to see a creature in distress, and the sight of that arm thrown up in a wild gesture filled him with a quivering horror. He could not bear to look at it and turned his eyes away.
Fairly leaping through the water, the launch came on the scene and Katherine stopped the engine. “Don’t give up, we’re coming,” she shouted at a distance of fifteen feet.
Slim stood up and prepared to drag the woman over the side. Then he and Katherine began to stare hard. Then they looked at each other. Then they quietly folded up in the bottom of the launch and went into spasms of mirth.