Charlie to the Rescue | Page 3

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