"Do not cry, Mrs. Maloney; I'm going to ask the Captain to let me go to Teddy, and I'll have him here with you in no time."
"No, no, child. Don't ye be dhrownded, too. Nothing can save me b'y now ahl the min have failed."
"But I mean to try it, Mrs. Maloney. Dry your tears and watch me do it."
Teddy Maloney on the snag in mid-stream was now suffering intensely. Seated upon a tree trunk barely ten inches in diameter, and kept from flipping down its slope by a rugged knot, his position was almost unendurable. For five hours he had clung there hatless and coatless, with his back to a broiling sun. Dazed by suffering and dizzied by the leaping, gliding, and wrinkling water that gurgled and pulled at his half-submerged legs, he was still conscious of the efforts being made for his rescue. He saw Reddy shoot the rapids, and with a growing conviction that he could not hold on much longer, he wondered why his boy friend did not come to his aid. "He is the only one in the whole crowd that knows anything about a boat. Why don't they let him do something?" thought poor Teddy.
As if in answer to this silent appeal, Redmond Carter at the same moment approached Captain Bartlett and begged permission to go for his comrade.
"But, Carter, how can you expect to accomplish what these older and stronger men have failed to do?" asked the Captain.
"They do not know what to do, sir. I was born on the Kennebec, sir. I have run barefooted on booms, rafts, and jams, and have boated in birch canoes, dugouts, punts, and yawls, and I can run a rapid, as you have just seen."
"A Kennebec boy, Reddy!" said the officer, for the first time using the boy's pet name. "I know what Kennebec boys could do when I was one of them. Yon may try it; but be careful."
Reddy sprang into the boat and began rowing up stream in the shore eddy. Reaching the desired distance he turned into the middle of the river, and changing his seat to the stern and using an oar for a paddle, he dropped down the current toward the snag. As he neared it, he saw Teddy's hands relax and his body sway slightly to the right.
"Hold on, Teddy!" he shouted. "Keep your grip! I'm right here!"