The Half-Back: A Story of School, Football, and Golf

by Ralph Henry Barbour

"All right," Joel called. "Go up to the field and send some one for help." Then he turned his attention again to his strokes, and raising his head once, saw an open river before him with nothing in sight between him and the opposite bank save, farther down stream, a floating oar. He had made some allowance for the current, and when in another moment he had reached what seemed to him to be near the scene of the catastrophe, yet a little farther down stream, he trod water and looked about. Under the bluff to the right Cloud was crawling from the river. West was gone from sight. About him ran the stream, and save for its noise no sound came to him, and nothing rewarded his eager, searching gaze save a branch that floated slowly by. With despair at his heart, he threw up his arms and sank with wide-open eyes, peering about him in the hazy depths. Above him the surface water bubbled and eddied; below him was darkness; around him was only green twilight. For a moment he tarried there, and then arose to the surface and dashed the water from his eyes and face. And suddenly, some thirty feet away, an arm clad in a white sweater sleeve came slowly into sight.

With a frantic leap through the water Joel sped toward it. A bare head followed the upstretched arm; two wild, terror-stricken eyes opened and looked despairingly at the peaceful blue heavens; the white lips moved, but no sound came from them. And then, just as the eyes closed and just as the body began to sink, as slowly as it had arisen, and for the last time, Joel reached it.

There was no time left in which to pause and select a hold of the drowning boy, and Joel caught savagely at his arm and struck toward the bank, and the inert body came to the surface like a water-logged plank.

"Clausen!" shouted Joel. "Clausen! Can you hear? Brace up! Strike out with your right hand, and don't grab me! Do you hear?"

But there was no answer. Clausen was like stone in the water. Joel cast a despairing glance toward the bluff. Then his eyes brightened, for there sliding down the bank he saw a crowd of boys, and as he looked another on the bluff threw down a coil of new rope that shone in the afternoon sunlight as it fell and was seized by some one in the throng below.

Nerved afresh, Joel took a firm grasp on Clausen's elbow and struck out manfully for shore. It was hard going, and when a bare dozen long strokes had been made his burden so dragged him down that he was obliged to stop, and, floundering desperately to keep the white face above water, take a fresh store of breath into his aching lungs. Then drawing the other boy to him so that his weight fell on his back, he brought one limp arm about his shoulder, and holding it there with his left hand started swimming once more. A dozen more strokes were accomplished slowly, painfully, and then, as encouraging shouts came from shore, he felt the body above him stir into life, heard a low cry of terror in his ear, and then--they were sinking together, Clausen and he, struggling there beneath the surface! Clausen had his arm about Joel's neck and was pulling him down--down! And just as his lungs seemed upon the point of bursting the grasp relaxed around his neck, the body began to sink and Joel to rise!

With a deafening noise as of rushing water in his ears, Joel reached, caught a handful of cloth, and struggled, half drowned himself, to the surface. And then some one caught him by the chin--and he knew no more until he awoke as from a bad dream to find himself lying in the sun on the narrow beach, while several faces looked down into his.

"Did you get him?" he asked weakly.

"Yep," answered Outfield West, with something that sounded like a sob in his voice. "He's over there. He's all right. Don't get up," he continued, as Joel tried to move. "Stay where you are. The fellows are bringing a boat, and we'll take you both back in it."