Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies | Page 5

person was, but she knew he was alone. She could not imagine

how he was to aid them.
Why did he not run to the store and bring other men to help? There! he
seemed to have leaped right into the river!
"Oh, dear me! the strongest swimmer could not reach us, let alone help
Uncle Jabez ashore," was Ruth's thought.
But up came the figure into sight again. Dripping, of course, now he
stood firmly on a peak of rock that was thrust above the tide, and shook
back the long black hair from his eyes.
He was a wild looking person. His feet were bare and his ragged
trousers were rolled to his knees. He wore neither vest nor coat, and his
shirt was open at his throat. To Ruth he seemed very bronzed and rough
looking.
But whoever, or whatever, he might be, the girl prayed that he would
prove able to rescue Uncle Jabez. She felt that she could save herself,
but she was having all she could do to bear up the unconscious miller.
"Hold on!" shouted the rescuer again.
Once more he plunged forward. He disappeared off the rock. Was he
swimming again? The half-overturned boat hid him from Ruth's gaze.
Suddenly he shouted close at hand. Up he bobbed on the higher point
of rock just beyond the boat.
"What's the matter, Missy?" he demanded. "Is the old man hurt?"
"He hit his head. See! he is unconscious," explained Ruth.
"I'll get him! Look out, now; I've got to push off this old boat, Missy.
She ain't no good, anyway."
Ruth saw that he was a big, black-haired, strong looking boy. His
complexion was very dark and his eyes sparkling--like cut jet beads. He
might have been seventeen or eighteen years old, but he was fully as

tall, and apparently as strong, as an ordinary man.
His long hair curled and was tangled like a wild man's. His beard had
begun to grow on his lip and chin. In his ears Ruth saw small gold rings
and his wrists and forearms--which were bared--were covered with an
intricate pattern of tattooing in red and blue ink.
Altogether, she had never seen so strange a boy in all her life--and
certainly none so strong. He leaped into the broken boat, seized Ruth's
oar that had not been lost in the overset, and bracing it against the rock,
pushed the trembling boat free in a moment.
Ruth could not repress a scream. It looked as though he, too, must be
thrown into the river, as the boat was caught by the current and jerked
free.
But the wild boy laughed and leaped upon the higher part of the rock.
As the miller's old boat drifted down stream, he sprang into the water
again and reached the girl and her burden.
"Give him to me!" commanded the boy. "I can bear him up better than
you, Missy. We'll get him ashore--and you can't be any wetter than you
are now."
"Oh, never mind me!" cried Ruth. "I am not afraid of a ducking. And I
can swim."
"You don't want to try swimming in this place, Missy," he returned.
"You follow right behind me--so."
He turned, carrying the heavy figure of the miller in his arms as though
he weighed but a hundred pounds instead of nearer two, and set off
toward the shore along the ledge of rock by which he had come.
Ruth saw, now, that beyond where the boat had been wrecked, the rock
joined the shore, with only here and there a place where it was deep
under water.

She saw, too, that the boat was now sinking. It had not sailed ten yards
in the fierce current before its gunwales disappeared. It sank in a deeper
channel below--flour and all! Ruth realized that Uncle Jabez would be
sorely troubled over the loss of those bags of flour.
Ruth paddled to the shore behind the strong boy, but before they really
reached terra firma, she knew that Uncle Jabez was struggling back to
consciousness. The boy lowered the miller easily to the ground.
"He's coming 'round, Missy," he said. His smile was broad, and the
little gold rings twinkled in his ears.
Ruth, wet and bedrabbled as she was, did not think of her own
discomfort. She knelt beside Uncle Jabez and spoke to him. For some
seconds he was so dazed that he did not seem to recognize her. Then he
stammered:
"Ha--ha----I knowed we couldn't do it. No--no gal kin do a man's work.
Ha!"
This seemed rather hard on Ruth, after she had done her best, and it had
not been her fault that the boat was wrecked, but she was too excited
just then to trouble about the miller's grumbling.
"Oh, Uncle!