Placing Miss Beattison’s inanimate form gently against a mossy knoll our perturbed hero presented himself over the wall of foliage and called to his lady-love, “Oh wait there, I will be with you in a minute.”
“No, stay where you are,” came back the silvery response; “you can’t come down, I will cross the river on the stepping stones and come to you.”
“Oh, but this is awful,” muttered Richard under his breath, “Jeannie will be here in three minutes and will find Miss Beattison, and how on earth can I explain things?”
Then he turned his attention to Miss Beattison, who was slowly regaining consciousness. “Are you feeling better?” he began with a wonderful softness and shamefacedness in eye and tone, when suddenly a piercing scream made him leap to his feet and run to the other side of the bridge.
“My God! Jeannie has fallen in and been swept over the rapids.”
Then he sped like a deer across the bridge, down the sloping bank at the further side and past the rushing rapids to the whirling pool where poor Jeannie, still partially buoyed up by her clothes, was whirling around in the grasp of the fatal current.
CHAPTER VII.
A WILD thrill of remorse shot through Richard Dalrymple’s heart even as he sprang headlong into the whirlpool, and then he felt as if he was fighting for his life in the embrace of a hundred devil-fish.
This way and that the currents buffeted him, fed in their strength by the momentum of the rapids above, until all the breath was battered out of his body. Suddenly a wayward current threw him against a projecting rock which he caught, thereby probably saving his life. A coward would have ceased his efforts at this point, but not so Richard Dalrymple. Once more the form of his sweetheart met his eye, this time in the pool beyond. Gathering himself up with such strength as he had left, he climbed over the intervening rocks and again plunged to the rescue.
This time his effort was successful. With choking words of encouragement, to cheer his sweetheart, who was fast losing consciousness, by an Herculean effort he swam with her to the lower shore and pushed her gently before him on to the low bank. All at once the friendly swirl of the current changed and he was borne out into the centre of the whirlpool. Again he caught the point of a rock, this time with his feet, and by swimming with all his force, he maintained for a short space a precarious foothold.