Charlie to the Rescue. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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he said, “you don’t understand the danger as I do. Don’t you see that the water runs into the hole at such a rate that there’s a tree-mendous eddy that would sweep any man off his legs—”
“But you’re goin’ to swim, you know,” interrupted his friend, “an’ have got to be off your legs anyhow!”
“That’s all you know,” returned the other. “If a man’s swept round by an eddy, don’t you know, he’ll be banged against things, and then the water rushes out of the hole with such a gush, an’ goes thunderin’ down below, over boulders and stones, and—an’—don’t you see?”
“That’s true, Shank; it does look dangerous, even for a man that can swim.”
He put such emphasis on the “man” that his comrade glanced sharply at him, but the genuine innocence of our hero’s face was too obvious to suggest irony. He simply saw that the use of the word man pleased his friend, therefore he used it.
Conversation was cut short at this point by the sudden appearance on the scene of two strangers—a kitten and a dog.
The assertion that “dogs delight to bark and bite” is, perhaps, too sweeping, but then it was made by a poet and poets have an acknowledged licence—though not necessarily a dog-licence. Certain it is, however, that this dog—a mongrel cur—did bark with savage delight, and display all its teeth, with an evident desire to bite, as it chased a delirious tortoise-shell kitten towards the river.
It was a round, soft, lively kitten, with the hair on its little body sticking straight out, its heart in its mouth, and horror in its lovely eyes. It made straight for the tree under which the dinner was going on. Both boys started up. Enemies in front and rear! Even a human general might have stood appalled. Two courses were still open—right and left. The kitten turned right and went wrong, for that was the river-side. No time for thought! Barking cur and yelling boys! It reached the edge of the pool, spread out all its legs with a caterwaul of despair, and went headlong into the water.
Shank Leather gazed—something like glee mingled with his look of consternation. Not so our hero. Pity was bursting his bosom. With one magnificent bound he went into the pool, caught the kitten in his right hand, and carried it straight to the bottom. Next moment he re-appeared on the surface, wildly beating the water with one hand and holding the kitten aloft in the other. Shank, to do him justice, plunged into the river up to his waist, but his courage carried him no further. There he stuck, vainly holding out a hand and shouting for help.
But no help was near, and it seemed as if the pair of strugglers were doomed to perish when a pitiful eddy swept them both out of the deep pool into the foaming rapid below. Shank followed them in howling despair, for here things looked ten times worse: his comrade being tossed from billow to breaker, was turned heels over head, bumped against boulders, stranded on shallows, overturned and swept away again—but ever with the left arm beating wildly, and the right hand with the kitten, held high in air.
But the danger, except from being dashed against the boulders, was not really as great as it seemed, for every time that Brooke got a foothold for an instant, or was driven on a rock, or was surged, right-end-up, on a shoot of water, he managed to gasp a little air—including a deal of water. The kitten, of course, had the same chances, and, being passive, perhaps suffered less.
At the foot of the rapid they were whirled, as if contemptuously, into an eddy. Shank was there, as deep as he dared venture. He even pushed in up to the arm-pits, and, catching his comrade by the hair, dragged him to bank.
“O Charlie, I’ve saved ye!” he exclaimed, as his friend crawled out and sat down.
“Ay, an’ you’ve saved the kitten too!” replied his friend, examining the poor animal.
“It’s dead,” said Shank; “dead as mutton.”
“No, only stunned. No wonder, poor beast!”
With tender care the rescuer squeezed the water from the fur of the rescued. Then, pulling open his vest and shirt, he was about to place the kitten in his bosom to warm it.
“No use doin’ that,” said Leather. “You’re as wet an’ nigh as cold as itself.”
“That’s true. Sit down here,” returned Brooke, in a tone of command which surprised his comrade. “Open your shirt.”
Again Shank obeyed wonderingly. Next moment he gave a gasp as the cold, wet creature was thrust into his warm bosom.
“It makes me shiver all over,” he said.
“Never mind,” replied his friend coolly, as he got up and wrung the water out of his own garments.
“It’s beginning to move, Charlie,” said Shank, after a few minutes.
“Give it here, then.”
The creature was indeed showing feeble symptoms of revival, so Brooke—whose bosom was not only recovering its own heat, but was beginning to warm the wet garments—thrust it into his own breast, and the two friends set off homeward at a run.
At the nearest house they made inquiry as to the owner of the kitten, but failed to find one. Our hero therefore resolved to carry it home. Long before that haven was reached, however, his clothes were nearly dry, and the rescued one was purring sweetly, in childlike innocence—all the horrors, sufferings, and agonies of the past forgotten, apparently, in the enjoyment of the present.
Chapter Two.
The Shipwreck
We have no intention of carrying our reader on step by step through all the adventures and deeds of Charlie Brooke. It is necessary to hasten over his boyhood, leaving untold the many battles fought, risks run, and dangers encountered.
He did not cut much of a figure at the village school—though he did his best, and was fairly successful—but in the playground he reigned supreme. At football, cricket, gymnastics, and, ultimately, at swimming, no one could come near him. This was partly owing to his great physical strength, for, as time passed by he shot upwards and outwards in a way that surprised his companions and amazed his mother, who was a distinctly little woman—a neat graceful little woman—with, like her stalwart son, a modest opinion of herself.
As a matter of course, Charlie’s school-fellows almost worshipped him, and he was always so willing to help and lead them in all cases of danger or emergency, that “Charlie to the rescue!” became quite a familiar cry on the playground. Indeed it would have been equally appropriate in the school, for the lad never seemed to be so thoroughly happy as when he was assisting some boy less capable than himself to master his lessons.
About the time that Charlie left school, while yet a stripling, he had the shoulders of Samson, the chest of Hercules, and the limbs of Apollo. He was tall also—over six feet—but his unusual breadth deceived people as to this till they stood close to him. Fair hair, close and curly, with bright blue eyes and a permanent look of grave benignity, completes our description of him.
Rowing, shooting, fishing, boxing, and swimming seemed to come naturally to him, and all of them in a superlative degree. Swimming was, perhaps, his most loved amusement and in this art he soon far outstripped his friend Leather. Some men are endowed with exceptional capacities in regard to water. We have seen men go into the sea warm and come out warmer, even in cold weather. Experience teaches that the reverse is usually true of mankind in northern regions, yet we once saw a man enter the sea to all appearance a white human being, after remaining in it upwards of an hour, and swimming away from shore; like a vessel outward bound, he came back at last the colour of a boiled lobster!
Such exceptional qualities did Charlie Brooke possess. A South Sea Islander might have envied but could not have excelled him.
It was these qualities that decided the course of his career just after he left school.
“Charlie,” said his mother, as they sat eating their mid-day meal alone one day—the mother being, as we have said, a widow, and Charlie an only child—“what do you think of doing, now that you have left school? for you know my income renders it impossible that I should send you to college.”
“I