"If I have run off with some one else's raft, I declare I shall just want to disappear!" he exclaimed to himself. "I do believe I shall be too ashamed ever to go home again. Oh dear! There is another steamboat."
The notes of a deep-voiced whistle, evidently near at hand, caused the boy to hasten outside. He could see a huge confused mass dimly looming out of the fog ahead, and a little to one side of him. At the same moment he heard the wild jangling of bells, the terrified shoutings, and then the awful crash that denoted a collision. A big up-bound steamboat had run down and sunk a smaller boat of some kind. That much he could see, and he was filled with horror at the nearness and magnitude of the disaster.
He had heard agonized screams, and knew that lives had been sacrificed. One shrill cry that came to his ears with startling distinctness sounded as though uttered by a woman or a girl, and Winn shuddered at the thought of her fate.
The raft was drifting rapidly away from the scene of the catastrophe, and the dimly discerned steamboat was just disappearing from his view, when the boy thought he heard a gurgling cry from the water. Could some bold swimmer have escaped? He bent his head to the water's edge and listened. Again he heard the cry. And this time it seemed nearer. Some human being was struggling in the river. Now, if ever, was the time for his promptest action, and with Winn thought and action went hand in hand.
In another moment he was in the skiff belonging to the raft, and pulling with all the strength of his stout young arms in the direction of the cries.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE RESCUE OF SABELLA.
Strongly as Winn pulled, the cries grew very faint and almost inaudible during the few seconds that elapsed before he discovered the struggling forms from which they proceeded. A glance over his shoulder showed him a man swimming with one arm, while the other supported a child—apparently a girl.
With a final powerful stroke the skiff shot alongside the drowning figures, the oars were jerked in, and Winn, leaning over the side, seized the girl's arm. At the same moment the man grasped the gunwale of the skiff. It was no slight task for Winn to get the girl into the boat, for she was unconscious, and formed a dead weight, that was made heavier by her soaked clothing. He finally succeeded; and as he laid the limp form in the bottom of the skiff and took his first good look at her face, he uttered a cry of amazement, and doubted the evidence of his senses. How was it possible that Sabella could be there, and in such a predicament? Could the boat that had just been run into be the Whatnot? If so, who was this man? He turned to look, and to help him into the skiff; but, to his horror, the man had disappeared.