“We’ll get him, don’t you fear,” Billy was saying, half to himself, as though he may have been doubtful up to then. “That cabin is going to behave, and not act like a bucking broncho to toss him off, even if it does lurch and bog something scandalous. Give him a cheer, boys, to hearten him more. Now, altogether!”
So they ran down alongside the cabin. They had discovered some time back that their conclusion about its being a half-grown boy who was clinging to the roof of the floating house was correct. He looked peaked and white, indeed, though it could be seen that he was beginning to pluck up new courage as he saw them drawing ever nearer.
“How’ll we get him aboard without running too much risk, Hugh?” asked Billy.
“First get your rope ready,” the pilot told him. “Have a loop in the end just as you did for Miss Maria. Then when I pull alongside throw it up to him. Once he gets that loop under his arms, and we can be sure of drawing him aboard even if he happened to make a slip and fall overboard.”
“I like the scheme, Hugh,” was the only comment Billy made as he hurriedly took up the accommodating clothes line, at the end of which he found the same running noose that had played such a prominent part in the saving of the little old maid who had persisted in clinging to her perch in the tree.
“Guess I can fling it all right, even if the room isn’t all I’d like,” Billy remarked as he arranged the coils the way he had seen some Western cowboys do many a time in a Wild West show. “Please back off, Tip, and get on my other side. And, Monkey, hold the push pole out of the way when you hold off from the cabin. All ready here, Hugh. Bring her closer, will you?”
Hugh was calculating the distance. He wanted to succeed in their present undertaking because that boy’s life was just as valuable as any other they had saved during the momentous day. At the same time Hugh did not wish to make any blunder apt to cost them dear.
Billy saw his chance, and giving the necessary toss sent the coils of rope across the roof of the teetering cabin.
“Get hold of that rope, and slip the loop under your arms!” he called out as loud as he could, for the water was making a lot of noise as it swirled about the cabin and the launch, forming fierce eddies and little whirlpools.
The boy was not so badly frightened now. He could do what he was told, they saw with considerable relief. Had it been otherwise one of the rescuing party, perhaps the agile Monkey Stallings, would have been compelled to clamber up to the roof and have accomplished the dangerous work in that way.