The last hymn had been sung, the last prayer said. At its ending the crowd slowly began filing down the one long, narrow plank reaching from the ship's gangway to the wharf. Nobody seemed to have noticed that the rising tide had lifted this plank to an incline that would make the descent trying to weak nerves, especially as there were five or six feet of clear water to be passed over between ship and shore. It was just as one young lady was in the act of stepping upon this plank that two young scapegraces ahead of her ran down it with such violence as to make it rebound like a springboard, causing the young lady first to lose her balance, then to make a false step, and then to fall screaming into the water, twenty feet below.
Everybody ran to that side, and everybody began shouting at once: "Man overboard!" "A boat: get a boat!" "Throw over a rope!—a plank!" "She's going down!" "Help! help!" but nobody seemed to have their wits about them. With the hundreds looking on, it really seemed as if the girl might drown before help could reach her.
Both Charley and Walter had witnessed the accident: coats and hats were off in a jiffy. Snatching up a coil of rope, it was the work of a moment for Walter to make a running noose, slip that under his arms, sign to Charley to take a turn round a bitt, then to swing himself over into the chains and be lowered down into the water on the run by the quick-witted Charley.
Meantime, the young lady's father was almost beside himself. In one breath he called to his daughter, by the name of Dora, to catch at a rope that was too short to reach her; in the next he was offering fifty, a hundred dollars to Walter if he saved her.
Walter rescuing Dora Bright.—Page 42.
Giving himself a vigorous shove with his foot, in two or three strokes Walter was at the girl's side and with his arms around her. It was high time, too, as her clothes, which had buoyed her up so far, were now water-soaked and dragging her down. Only her head was to be seen above water. At Walter's cheery "Haul away!" fifty nervous arms dragged them dripping up the ship's side. The young lady fell, sobbing hysterically, into her father's arms, and was forthwith hurried off into the cabin, while Walter, after picking up his coat and hat, slipped off through the crowd, gained the wharf unnoticed, and with the faithful, but astonished, Charley at his heels, made a bee-line for his lodgings. Moreover, Walter exacted a solemn promise from Charley not to lisp one word of what had happened, on pain of a good drubbing.
"My best suit, too!" he ruefully exclaimed, while divesting himself of his wet clothes. "No matter: let him keep his old fifty dollars. Pretty girl, though. I'm paid ten times over. A coil of rope's a handy thing sometimes. So's a rigger—eh, Charley?"
Charley merely gave a dissatisfied grunt. He was very far from understanding such refined sentiments. Besides, half the money, he reflected, would have been his, or ought to have been, which was much the same thing to his way of thinking. And when he thought of the many things he could have done with his share, the loss of it made him feel very miserable, and more than half angry with Walter. "Fifty dollars don't grow on every bush," he muttered. "Then, what lions we'd 'a' been in the papers!" he lamented.
"You look here. Can't you do anything without being paid for it? I'd taken thanks from the old duffer, but not money. Can't you understand? Now you keep still about this, I tell you."