out of his coat and kicked off his shoes and would probably have swum to the wharves with her, but a tug, at full speed and blowing its whistle for other boats to come, ran over them. Shall I wait for the organ to stop?”

“No, your voice and that music were made for just such a story. The tug ran over them—”

“As it struck, the boy seized the dress of the child at the throat, with his teeth, covered her face with his hands, and went down with her. The boat passed, and they rose and whirled in the foam of its wake. The boy’s teeth held like a bulldog’s, though the barnacles on the tug had torn his side cruelly and something had broken his left arm. He could now only support the child by swimming on his back, her face drawn up to his breast, her hands clinging to his shoulders, and body floating free.”

“He knew how to save a drowning person, who wasn’t panic-stricken. It must have been a brave child to keep her head through it all.”

“As they drifted on with the tide, unseen, he comforted her, promising he would be sure to get her to the land and take her home. He stopped calling for help when he found his voice frightened her. And then he laughed to show her he was not afraid, and told her little stories of the South, where he came from, and sang the songs his black mammy sang to him when he was very little, so that the girl forgot her fears and put her faith in the wonderful boy, who knew so much, and had come to help her.

“Then, after a long while, he told her to try and sleep; to lay her head on his breast, but first to lift her face up toward the skies and pray God for her father and mother and the old black woman, who had ‘turned back because she couldn’t swim,’ and to bring the boy and herself to the land soon. And she did. And then, maybe, she went to sleep, for she could never afterwards remember any more. And maybe the boy went to sleep, too, for they found them both floating under the stars off the Liberty Light hours later, his one good arm slowly, oh! so slowly, striking the water, the other, broken and trailing under him, and his white face turned upward, and his teeth again clenched on the child’s dress, so hard they had to cut it to get her away from him.” Billee suddenly drew her hands away and covered her face.

“He was probably tired and asleep, too,” said King gently, “you can’t drown that kind of chap.”

“It’s the song ‘Absent’ that voice is singing up there,” said Billee, furtively wiping her eyes. “It 

 Prev. P 20/39 next