He sprang to his feet and immediately started to run along the bank,
heading up the stream, for the point of land with its clump of trees cut
off his view.
The screams still continued, accompanied by a splashing of water that
alarmed Dick more than ever, for he was now sure that Bessie Gibbs must
have fallen overboard, and was in danger of drowning.
He burst through the bushes and stood on the shore.
His first sight of the river at this point relieved him greatly, for he
discovered the rowboat half way across, with a little maid in it
frantically trying to recover one of her oars that had slipped away in
the excitement of the moment.
There was also something struggling furiously in the water at a little
distance, and which Dick could not make out at first; but when he
shouted at the top of his voice and started to wade out toward the spot
the girl turned toward him and wildly beckoned, at the same time crying
out:
"Oh! save him, save my poor Benjy--he will drown! Dick! _please_ get him
for me!"
It was not a human being in peril at all, only Bessie's pet Angora cat,
a fuzzy little creature Dick remembered seeing on the seat of the Gibbs
carriage one day when he met Bessie on the road, and she nodded to him,
just as friendly as ever.
He pushed resolutely out to where the wretched little beast, having
fallen overboard through a miscalculation, was being carried down-stream
by the current and in sore peril of meeting death by drowning, since
cats are but poor swimmers at best.
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