Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California

As Frank Norris approached the group he began to unbutton his collar and waistcoat.

"It will be a beastly cold swim," he grumbled to himself, "but I can't see the poor little brute drowned, and drowned he certainly will be if no one goes in for him. It's no distance to swim, and I should think one could wade to within twenty yards of him; but it certainly will be horribly cold." And he gave a shiver of anticipation as he looked at the smooth frozen surface.

With some little difficulty Frank pushed his way through to the centre of the group by the water's side. A little girl, poorly dressed, was standing crying bitterly; a cripple boy in a box upon wheels was trying to pacify her, while another who had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and laid them in the lap of the cripple, was unlacing his boots.

"Are you going in, young un?" Frank said, as he joined them.

"Yes, sir; I am going in for Flossy. She belongs to this little girl, who is one of our neighbours."

"Can you swim well?" Frank asked, "for the water will be bitterly cold."

"Yes," the boy answered confidently, "I goes regularly for a swim above Vauxhall Bridge in the summer, and keeps on until the water gets too cold. I can do that fast enough. I suppose the ice will break right enough," and he looked up inquiringly at Frank.

"Yes, it will break with your weight easily enough; you will have to raise yourself a little so as to break it before you. You will have to put some weight on, for it is nearly half an inch thick; I expect there is a thin place where the dog has fallen in – a spring underneath, most likely, so a mere skin has formed.

"Look here, young un, I was going in if you hadn't. I shall get my boots ready to kick off now, so don't you be frightened if you get numbed with the cold, or a touch of cramp; just sing out and I will be with you in a minute."

The cripple looked with pleasure up into Frank's face.

"It is very good of you, sir, for you don't know the dog as Evan does. Ah! I know your face, sir," he broke off, "I saw you in the fight down by our place at Westminster, when Evan ran up and fetched some more of your chaps – and just in time they were too."

"Oh! was it your brother who brought that news?" Frank said quickly; "then I owe him one, and if I go in to fetch him out we shall be only quits."

Evan had by this time entered the water, breaking the ice before him as he went.

"My eye, ain't it cold!" he said, half-turning round, "seems to nip one's legs up regular. All right, Flossy," he shouted to the dog, as he continued his way out, in answer to a pitiful whine of the struggling animal.

For the first few paces Evan's progress was easy enough; but when he got so deep that he could no longer break the ice with his foot his difficulties began, and it was only by flinging himself down upon it that he was able to break it. A few yards further on the water was up to his chin. He was now breaking the ice by trying to climb upon it. Frank was watching him closely, and noticed that he no longer proceeded about his work deliberately, but with a hurried and jerky action, as if he felt his strength failing him. Frank pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and handed them to the cripple, kicked off his boots, and stood in readiness to plunge in.

The crowd had at first cheered the lad as he made his way from the shore; some still uttered shouts of encouragement, others saw that he was getting exhausted, and called to him to return. Suddenly the boy seemed to lose his power altogether, held on to the edge of the ice, and cast a despairing look towards the shore. Then gradually his head disappeared under the water; but Frank was already half-way towards him. A few strides had taken him through the shallow water, and he swam with vigorous strokes through the floating fragments to the end of the line of broken water; then he too disappeared for a moment. A dead silence reigned through the crowd; but when two heads appeared above the water together, a ringing cheer broke out. Carrying his senseless companion, Frank swam back to shore.

"Take off his wet clothes," he said, as he handed his burden to some of the men. "Wrap him up in my coat and his own, and then run with him up to the Humane Society's House, they will bring him round in no time; it is cold, not drowning."

Then he looked again across the water. The little dog was swimming feebly now, its nose scarcely above the surface. It had given a plaintive cry of despair as it saw those who had approached so near turn back, for there were but some five yards between the spot where the boy's strength had failed and the circle which it had broken in its efforts to climb out.

"I can't be colder than I am," Frank said to himself, "so here goes."

Accordingly he again dashed into the water and swam to the end of the narrow passage; a few vigorous strokes broke the intervening barrier of ice. He seized the little dog, put it on the ice, and with a push sent it sliding towards the shore, and then turned and swam back again.

It was only just where the dog had fallen in that the ice was too weak to bear its weight, and, after lying for two or three minutes utterly exhausted, it scrambled to its feet and made its way to the bank, where it was soon wrapped in the apron of its delighted mistress.

Frank, on reaching the shore, was scarcely able to stand, so benumbed were his legs by the cold. His cousins had made their way through the crowd to the spot.

"O Frank," Alice exclaimed, "what a mad thing for you to do. Oh! I am so pleased you did it – but oh, you do look cold! What will you do?"

"I am all right, Alice," Frank said, as cheerfully as his chattering teeth would allow him to speak. "You go home with Fred; I shall get a hot bath and have my clothes dried at the receiving-house, and shall be as right as a trivet in half an hour. There, good-bye!"

Frank walked stiffly at first, but was presently able to break into a run, which he kept up until he reached the establishment of the Royal Humane Society. His first question, as he entered, was for the boy.

"He will do, sir," the attendant answered, "we popped him at once into a hot bath we had ready, and he has opened his eyes, and is able to speak; we have just got him into bed between warm blankets, and now it's your turn."

In another minute Frank was in the bath from which the boy had just been taken, for there was no time to prepare another. For the first minute or two he felt an intense pain as the blood flowed back into his chilled limbs, then a delightful sensation of warmth and comfort stole over him; a glass of hot brandy and water completed his cure, and a few minutes later he felt that he was fast going off to sleep in the warm blankets between which he was laid.

Before the crowd whom the incident on the Serpentine had gathered broke up, one or two of those present went among the rest and collected a subscription for the lad who had gone in after the dog. Nearly two pounds were collected in silver and coppers, and handed over to the cripple to give to his brother. Fred Barkley dropped in five shillings, and Alice Hardy the same sum. Then after walking to the receiving-house, and hearing that Frank and the lad had both recovered from the effects of the cold, and would probably be all right after a few hours' sleep, they returned home, Alice in a high state of excitement over the adventure which she had witnessed, Fred silent and gloomy.

He accompanied Alice to Eaton Square, and was present when she related to her uncle the story of the lad going in to rescue the dog, and of Frank going in to rescue the boy, and of his afterwards returning to set free the dog. Upon the way home he had appeared to Alice to take the matter exceedingly quietly, but he now, somewhat to her surprise, appeared almost as enthusiastic as herself, and spoke in terms of high admiration of Frank's conduct. Captain Bayley, as was usually the case with him, took a view of the matter entirely opposed to that of the speakers.

"Stuff and nonsense!" he said. "You call that a gallant action? I call it a foolish boy's trick. What right has Frank to risk getting rheumatic fever, and being laid up as a cripple for life, merely to save a dog?"

"But he went in to save a boy, uncle," Alice said indignantly.

"Pooh, pooh!" the old officer exclaimed, "the boy would never have gone in if he hadn't encouraged him. That makes the case all the worse. Frank not only risking catching rheumatism himself, but he risked the life of that boy by encouraging him to do such a foolish action. It was a hair-brained business altogether, sir; and I am glad you had the wisdom, Fred, to keep out of it. The idea of two lives being risked to save that of a wretched cur is too absurd; if you had offered the girl who owned it five shillings to buy another it would have been more sensible."

"I don't believe you mean what you say a bit, Uncle Harry," Alice exclaimed indignantly. "I believe if you had been there, and had heard that poor little dog's cries as we did, you would have gone in yourself. I am sure I would if I had been a man."

"I always observe, my dear," Captain Bayley said sarcastically, "that women would do wonderful things if they had only been born men. Nature appears to be always making mistakes by putting the dauntless and heroic spirits into female bodies, and vice versa."

"I don't like you when you talk like that, Uncle Harry – that is, I shouldn't like you if I thought you meant it; but you only talk so out of contradiction. If I had said I thought Frank was very foolish for having gone into the water, you would have taken the opposite side directly."

"You are an impudent puss, Miss Alice," her uncle retorted, "and I shall have to tell Miss Lancaster that unless she can keep you in better order I shall have to send you to school. You appear to have been born without the bump of veneration."

"I would venerate you ever so much, Uncle Harry," the girl replied, laughing, "if you would always be good and reasonable; but I cannot venerate you when you are contrary and disagreeable, and say things you don't mean."

As Fred Barkley walked home, he wondered again and again to himself whether Captain Bayley had meant what he said, and whether this act of Frank's would raise him in his opinion or the contrary; but he flattered himself that, at any rate, no harm had been done, for his own advocacy of his cousin could not but have placed him in the most favourable light.

Fred Barkley was shrewd, but his power of reading character was, as yet, by no means perfect, and his uncle's changing moods baffled the power of analysis. He would not have been pleased had he known that at that very moment the old officer was walking up and down his library, muttering to himself, "I would give a good deal if there were a glass window at that boy Fred's heart, that I could see what it is really made of. His head is strong enough; nature has given him a fair share of brains, but, unless I am greatly mistaken, there is a very grievous deficiency in his allowance of heart.

"I don't believe the boy ever spoke spontaneously from the time he learned to talk, but that every word he says is weighed before it passes through his lips, and its effect calculated; whereas Frank never thinks at all, but just blurts out the words which come to hand. It is curious how much more Alice takes to him than to Fred, for he bullies her and orders her about as if she were one of his fags, while Fred is as courteous and polite to her as if she were a young Countess. I suppose it is instinct, for children's opinions about people are seldom far wrong. I thought when I brought Alice here that she would help me to settle the problem."

Frank and Evan Holl woke at about the same time, after sleeping for some hours; their clothes had been dried for them, and they at once began to dress.

"How do you feel now, young un?" was Frank's first inquiry as they sat up in their beds.

"I dunno how I feels," Evan replied. "I hardly knows where I am, or how I got here, though I do seem to remember something about this 'ere place too. Oh yes!" he exclaimed suddenly, "I was trying to fetch out poor little Flossy, and the ice would not break, and I got colder and colder, and then I don't seem to remember any more except somehow that I was here with people standing round me, and I swallowed something hot and went off to sleep. Ah yes! you were the gentleman as said you would come in after me if I sang out."

"And I did come in," Frank said smilingly, "and only just in time I was, for you did not sing out, but went right down without a word. It was lucky you did not get under the ice."

"And Flossy," the boy said suddenly, "did she go down too?"

"No," Frank answered, "I went in again and got her out, after I had brought you back to shore."

"Well, you are a brick!" the boy said, "a regular downright un, and no mistake. I wonder how Harry got back; it would be a job for him to wheel hisself all the way back to Westminster."

"Oh, I expect he got some one to help him," Frank said; "and the little girl would be able to help shove him along."

"Yes, she would," Evan replied, "she can shove him by herself along a pavement, and I expect that he and she atween them would be able to get along. Lor! how them things of yours have shrunk, to be sure."

"They have, a bit," Frank said, looking down at his trousers, which were half-way up to his knees; "but it don't matter much, it's getting dark now, and I can take a cab when I get out of the Park. Your clothes don't seem to have suffered so much, they seem plenty large enough for you now."