Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Houseboats -- Juvenile fiction; Vacations -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
Madge struggled for breath for a second as she came to the surface of the
bay again. She had swallowed some salt water as she went down. In the
next desperate instant she counted three heads above the waves besides
her own. Phyllis was swimming quietly toward Eleanor. Evidently she had
entertained Madge's fear. "Make for the 'Water Witch,' Nellie," Madge
heard Phil say in her calm, cool-headed fashion. "It has overturned and
come up again and we can hang on to that. Don't be frightened. I am
coming after you. Try to float if your clothes are too heavy to swim.
I'll pull you to the boat."
Lillian's golden head reflected the light from the sun's rays as she swam
along after Phil. But nowhere could Madge see a sign of a little, wild,
black head with its straight, short locks and frightened black eyes.
She waited for another breathless moment. Why did Tania not rise to the
surface like the rest of them? Madge was trying to tread water and to
keep a sharp lookout about her, but her clothes were heavy and kept
pulling her down; swimming in heavy shoes is an extremely difficult
business, even for an experienced swimmer. All of a sudden it occurred to
Madge that Tania might have risen under the overturned rowboat. Then her
head would have struck against its bottom and she would have gone down
again without ever having been seen.
There was nothing else to be done. Madge must dive down to see what had
become of her little friend, yet diving was difficult when she had no
place from which to dive. Madge knew she must get all the way down to the
very bottom of the bay to see if by any chance Tania's body could have
been entangled among the sea weed, or her clothes caught on a rock or
snag.
Once down, she looked in vain for the little body along the sandy bottom
of the bay. She espied some rocks covered with shimmering shells and sea
ferns, but there was no trace of Tania. For the second time she rose to
the surface of the water. She hoped to see Tania's black head glistening
among those of her older friends clustered about the overturned boat. She
had grown very tired and was obliged to shake the water out of her eyes
before she dared trust herself to look.
Then she saw that Phil had hold of one of Eleanor's hands and with the
other was clinging to the slippery side of their overturned boat. Eleanor
was numb with cold and shock. Although her free hand rested on the boat,
Phil dared not let go of her for fear she would sink.
Phyllis was beginning to feel uneasy about Madge. She had given no
thought to her during the early part of the accident, she knew Madge to
be a water witch herself, but when the little captain did not come to the
skiff with the rest of them Phil's heart grew heavy. What could she do?
Dare she let go her hold on Eleanor? Strangely enough, in their peril,
Phyllis had given no thought to the little stranger, Tania.
Phyllis Alden breathed a happy sigh of relief when she saw Madge's curly,
red-brown head moving along toward them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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