CHAPTER IX

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*THE RESCUE*

"Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-- Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." TENNYSON'S _Ulysses_.

Fortunately the she-oak was one of the largest of its kind, and forked out into four branches twenty feet or so from the ground. This formed a rough cage, in which one could be held very securely if not comfortably.

In this fork, partially covered with a blanket, was huddled the form of a human creature, presumably a woman; one hand stretched along the trunk as in a painful grip, the legs hanging loosely. There was no movement of limb or body. What if she were dead?

A sudden chill accompanied this thought. The situation was decidedly uncanny, and bred awesome, not to say fearsome, feelings.

Four boys in a boat! Out on the flood-wastes, and in a particularly perilous position! The insistent noises of the rushing tide; the hollow moan of the wind in the foliage of the she-oaks; shut out from all help; missed now at home, and _that thing above_!

All these combined to create a creeping chill in each boy, which in a manner half-paralysed them.

Joe, as usual, recovered more quickly than the others. Gazing at the object above awhile, and then examining the trunk of the tree with his eyes, he broke the spell of silence.

"Take my place, Tom. Some un's got to go at once to that poor soul aloft. Pray God we're in time to save her. Keep her up tight against the trunk, Jimmy, an' I'll swing on to the limb."

Suiting his action to the word, Joe clambered on to the limb, and from thence proceeded to climb the tree.

The woman was fixed at the junction of the forks, and her feet and legs hung loosely down on each side of a minor fork. One arm, as before described, was wound round the main limb, while the other firmly grasped her breast. Her head was supported in the V of a branch.

On mounting to the spot, Joe raised himself higher by grasping two of the tree-forks, and, twisting his legs round the trunk, steadied himself while he gazed into the face of the dead. It was the first time in his life that he had looked upon death. The set expression that met his gaze, so full of anguish, so pitifully pleading, fairly shocked him out of his self-possession. Little wonder at his turning sick and faint. He clutched the branch frantically as he swayed a moment, and beads of cold sweat stood thick upon his forehead. Indeed, so near fainting was he that his sight began to fade, and the whole world receded from him. Strange noises buzzed in his ears. Bringing all the reserve forces of his will to the front, he was beginning to gain the ascendency over his weakness, when a strange cry startled him into full consciousness.

"Why! she's not dead after all, thank God!" The thought of life made all the difference to Joe. In a moment his vision is as clear as ever, and his spirits rise high at the sounds of life. "Yes, see!" whispered the lad, "there's a movement of the breast. Hurrah, boys!"

cried he to his comrades, looking down and waving with one hand at the same time. "She's not dead after all!"

The boys at this set up a hearty shout indicative of their relief and joy.

"Oh yes!" he muttered reassuringly to himself as he took the second look, "the poor creature's alive. Her eyes are half open. Her chest is heaving. Wake up, ma'am! Rescue is at hand. Me an' the boys in the boat below are goin' to take you down an' row you across to the township."

The woman made no response to this appeal and plan of salvation. "Is she really alive?" The eyes are half closed and seemingly peering; the form is rigid, the face immobile. There was naught of that expression in this countenance that Joe, from hearsay, was wont to associate with death--the peace that passeth understanding. Yet as the lad gazed at this apparently inanimate object there was a movement of the body. The blanket, bunched into many folds across the breast, stirred visibly.

Again that eerie, inarticulate cry!

Disengaging one hand from the tree, the boy stretched it forth to the woman's breast, which, covered as it was with the clothes, had all the seeming of life and movement.

Joe was in the very act of removing a fold of the blanket, when suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there rose up into the lad's face an angry, hissing, venomous snake, the deadliest of its kind. Its beady eyes glittered; its forked tongue shot in and out with inconceivable rapidity; its sibilant hiss was accompanied with a musky odour, sickening in the extreme; its head and body for half its length were erect, and bent forward from the neck, vibrating and swaying in a rhythmic movement. The reptile was within striking distance. In another second that almost invisible death-stroke will be dealt; invisible, that is, by reason of its lightning-like speed.

But this deadly intention is defeated by an involuntary movement on Joe's part. This young man, for the briefest of brief moments, clung to the tree with a rigid grasp; eyes staring in amazement and terror, with mouth wide open in automatic gape. Any attempt to defend himself were useless in the most absolute sense of that term. In another tick, before he can move a hand, these poison fangs will be deep buried in his horror-stricken face, so temptingly near. The only hope for the lad lay in doing a disappearing trick. And this happened. Had it been premeditated, however swiftly, the time taken to make up his mind, and to telegraph the resolution formed in the brain to the nerve cells and muscles, would have been sufficient for the lightning stroke to fall.

What really happened was this: the apparition of the red-bellied, black snake simply petrified Joe. An awful, blood-curdling, hair-raising, galvanic shock of abject terror, contradictory as it may seem, paralysed the lad. Simultaneously with that he is falling through space, an inert mass, to be soused into the water with a splash that sent the spray flying over the boat's crew.

At the moment of the splash, Joe's mind, will, and nerve were restored to their normal activity. The instinct of self-preservation, so strong in all healthy natures, especially boys', did for the lad in an infinitesimal fraction of time as much and as effectively as though he had taken, say, half an hour to plan his procedure.

He had, however, in escaping Scylla fallen into Charybdis. As soon as Joe reached the water he made for the boat. Fortunately he did not fall into it, or this story might never have been told. He fell into the stream, some two or three yards away from the skiff. Quickly as he was carried down-stream he managed by violent efforts to reach the boat at the stern. Tom clutched him frantically by the shirt collar, enabling the swimmer to get his hands on the gunwale. Joe, thus helped, clambered into the boat or ever the boat's crew had recovered from their consternation.

"Oh, Moses!" exclaimed, or rather gasped, he, "that--was--a go. Whew!"

"My goodness! How'd yer come to fall kersplosh like that?"

"Why!" pointing up. "See! there's the beast. See him crawling out there?"

The boys, looking up, descried the snake winding its sinuous way along a lateral bough that grew up above the forks. The disturbed and excited snake, having reached the limb, wound its course till it reached a clump of bushy branches on the limb's extremity. On this it coiled itself, save the head and neck, which stood erect in vigilant attitude.

"Oh, crikey! was that _there_ on--in the body's--the woman's body?"

"Yes, Jimmy; right in the blanket on her breast. 'Twas that brute moving under the blanket that I thought was _her_ breathing. Oh, my!" again exclaimed the youth, with a shudder, as he thought of the imminence of the danger which confronted him a moment before.

"Is--it--her--dead, Joe?" asked Tom after an interval of silence.

"No doubt of it, boys."

"Wonder if the snake bit her?"

"May have. Anyway the poor thing is dead all right."

"What's bes' thing to do now?"

"W-e-ll, I d-o-n't know----"

Again that shrill wailing cry!

"_Can't_ be the woman!" said Joe excitedly. "Why, she's as dead as a herrin'!"

"I have it, boys!" shouted Tom, as he jumped up excitedly and cut a caper. "It's the darned ole cat!"

A look of great relief passed over each countenance at the thought.

Tom, meanwhile, lifted up the locker lid, disclosing the rescued cat, which, together with her two bairns, were stowed in the locker shortly after being saved from the flood. The animals were snuggled together on a cornsack, and looked the very picture of contentment. The kittens were dining baby fashion, and the mother's purr declared the very excess of maternal rapture.

On seeing the boys, pussy gave a low, affectionate miaow, and made a sympathetic movement of the tail, as if to say: "Thank you a thousand times, young gentlemen, for the good deed which we never, never shall forget." And then, motherlike, proceeded to "lick" her offspring.

"It's not the cat, Tom."

"Well, what on earth, water, or air is it?"

The mystery is insoluble. As the boys look down upon the happy and contented felines, they one and all reject Tom's confident affirmation of a moment before. If not the cat, what then?

Again the tiny, shrill cry arose, but not from the cat's mouth. It came from the tree above, and as the startled youths looked up they saw the overhanging end of the blanket agitated.

"Why, why--the poor thing must really be alive after all, chaps. There's something more up there than I've discovered; so here's up again!"

## Acting on this impulse, Joe again ascended the tree. Those below watched

intently, their feelings strained to the utmost tension. As soon as our hero got to his former position in the forks, he received another shock. It was sudden as the other, but not so disastrous. An inarticulate and involuntary cry brought fresh alarm to his pals, who all the while were staring up, too frightened to ask any questions. The boy, despite the second shock, still clung to the tree. The woman was dead beyond all doubt, but death is counterbalanced by life. A brief and astonished survey, and the boy leans over the limb and speaks quietly to those below--

"The woman's dead, boys, but _there's a baby here_. It's tied to her breast. It's alive!"

Just then, as if to demonstrate the truthfulness of the statement, the babe lifted up its voice once more in a feeble cry. The scene in that tree Joe never will forget; the like he will not see again though he rival Methuselah in age. The only thing he can yet see is a little hand and arm, which have wriggled from the covering. Moving cautiously along the branch to the converging point, leaning on one fork, and placing his feet against another so as to stiffen himself, the boy was able to use his two hands. He first, and not without an inward tremor, removed the dead hand which lay upon the blanket, the stiffened fingers still clutching the clothes and holding them to the breast. The last thought and the last act of the exhausted and dying woman was to succour and to defend her little one.

Straightening the arm so that it lay by her side, Joe opened the blanket from where the little hand stuck up. There, on the breast of the dead, she lay, a sweet-faced baby girl! The little one's face was puckered up, 'tis true, and there were tears upon her pale cheeks. The cries and tears were not the symbols of pain, they were those of hunger. Joe could plainly see that all the mother's thoughts were for the child. It was snugly folded in the blanket end; then tied to her waist by a handkerchief passed round the body. The remainder of the blanket was then arranged so as to thoroughly protect the child from the inclement weather.

Untying the handkerchief, the lad folded it in a peculiar fashion like as he had seen the black gins do. Carefully lifting the babe, he laid it in the widest part, made it secure to the body under the arms, and placed it on his back, bringing the ends of the wrapper together. round his neck.

This done, he prepared for the descent. It was easily accomplished, even with the incumbrance of the child. Landing safely in the boat, which was kept well up to the tree, Joe placed her in the stern on the locker seat, where the little one lay squirming and crying piteously.

The news of the baby variously affected the boys. Jimmy Flynn, whose baby sister had died a few months before, looked very tenderly upon this nameless waif.

"Make a place on the floor for it, Joe," said he. "It'll lie there more comfortably, an' it'll be more like a cradle."

The advice was good. The coats, which the boys shed soon as they entered upon the expedition in the morning, made a soft bed for the little one. The wee mite was evidently about nine months old. For all its adventure and exposure it seemed to have suffered little, and now in its cry is only voicing the pleadings of its empty stomach. It was adequately, though very plainly dressed, and through all the rain of the preceding night had kept dry. Fortunately, too, the snake which had been curled up in one of the blanket folds had not come into actual contact with the child. There were only two things required to bring it to a condition of happy contentment: nursing and feeding.

Capable as this quartet of Australian lads were in many ways, in this they were novices. So it was with a look of ashamed helplessness that they gazed at the new passenger, as she lay in the bottom of the boat on her back, kicking her heels in the air at a great rate, and doubling her dimpled hands first into her eyes and then into her mouth. The cry went forth without ceasing, its only variation being the peculiar noise caused by an intermittent sucking of her diminutive fists.

By a happy thought of Jimmy the hunger difficulty was overcome. The boys had picked up a fine lot of oranges, as well as some dozens of plantains, in the back-water. After they had eaten a quantity they stowed the balance away in the bow locker, and completely forgot them in the exciting events which followed. Jimmy suddenly remembered the fruit. Selecting a fine specimen, he quickly peeled and quartered it. Then, seeding some of the quarters, he put one in baby's fist, guiding the same to her mouth. The sweet, juicy orange was simply nectar to the famished child. It sucked as only a hunger-bitten baby can. The boys were highly amused at the way in which she mouthed the skin, and the difficulty Jimmy encountered in unlocking her little fingers order to substitute a full for an empty quarter. It indeed a happy solution; an admirable recipe for tears and squalls. As long as baby had an orange quarter it was peaceful. After a little while Jimmy took the little one on his knee, giving furtive glances towards the others as he did so. The boys, however, under all the sad circumstances forebore to chaff. Substituting, at length, a ripe plantain for an orange section, the babe was taken to the seventh heaven of gastronomic bliss.

[Illustration: "The neighbours saw, far out on the wild, wreckage-strewn waters, a tiny boat with four slight figures."--_See p._ 69]

And the while above them in the she-oak, whose thread-like leaves make mournful music to the wind, lies the mother who has sacrificed her life for that of the babe. There is no doubt of this. The poor woman must have been exposed to the winds and waves long before she reached the tree refuge. How she got there was never known. She had almost denuded herself to protect the babe. Little wonder that at some moment of that awful night vigil the vital spark should have quitted its terror-haunted tenement.

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