The Water Was By This Time
Full Of Men, Who Had Rushed To The Rescue; But They Had Foolishly
Jumped In At The Spot Where They Had First Seen The Girls, Who
Were Of Course By This Time Carried Far Away By The Torrent.
Once
more, farther down the river, the hands and bracelets appeared;
again they wildly clapped together, and in the clear water we
could plainly see the dark hair beneath.
Still, she sank again;
but almost immediately she rose head and shoulders above the
surface, and thrice she again clapped her hands for aid.
This was her last effort; she disappeared. By the time several
men had wisely run along the bank below the tail of the rapids,
and having formed a line across a very narrow portion of the
stream, one of them suddenly clutched an object beneath the water
and in another moment he held the body of the girl in his arms.
Of course she was dead? or a fit subject for the Royal Humane
Society?--So I supposed; when to our intense astonishment, she no
sooner was brought to the shore than she gave herself a shake,
threw back her long hair, wrung out and arranged her dripping
rahat, and walked leisurely back to the ford, which she crossed
with the assistance of the Arab who had saved her.
What she was composed of I cannot say; whether she was the
offspring of a cross between mermaid and hippopotamus, or hatched
from the egg of a crocodile, I know not, but a more wonderfully
amphibious being I have rarely seen.
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