The race for a life was almost neck and neck until Joe, showing his tremendous reserve strength, shot ahead at the very end, grasping the struggling figure as it was sinking for the last time.
Jim helped, and together they brought the rescued girl—the long dank black hair testified to her sex—back to shore, where a group of the native blacks, attracted by the cries, had gathered to welcome them.
Dripping and exhausted, the two heroes of the occasion staggered up the bank while willing hands relieved them of their burden.
“Let’s beat it,” whispered Jim, as the crowd of natives closed around the unconscious object of their heroism, “while the going’s good. If that girl ever finds out that you rescued her she’ll want to attach herself to you for life. That seems to be the fool custom of these parts.”
“She’d find it pretty hard work,” said Joe, with a wry smile. “Besides, we don’t even know that the girl’s alive. It would be pretty heartless to clear out without learning.”
“Oh, all right,” said Jim, uneasily. “But 196 remember, if there are any consequences you’ve got to take ’em.”
At that moment the crowd opened and the boys saw a remarkably good-looking black girl standing dizzily and supported by another native who might have been her father.
She looked dazedly from one to the other of the young men and Jim promptly “stepped out from under.”
“It’s him,” said Jim, neglecting grammar in his eagerness to shift the burden of credit to Joe’s broad shoulders. “He did it all.”
The girl walked unsteadily up to Joe and said, submissively: “My life is yours! Me your slave!”