feet of the water.

"Hold, I say!" yelled the professor in a rage, letting go the rope to
the safety-valve and at the same time, grabbing a sand-bag. "If you stir
out of this car I'll pitch ballast out and you'll never see your gal
again!"

Swift stopped short. The rope-ladder swayed like a double snake beneath
them. Its end was fifty feet above the boat, but, O horrors! It was also
nearly fifty feet to one side of the boat--no human power could reach
the lady from the ladder. A breath might blow the _High Tariff_ even
farther away.

At the same time the girl, doubtless aroused from her stupor by the
professor's loud call, opened her eyes slowly. Above her loomed a
gigantic monster. Was it a dream? Was this apparition a final terror
added to her awful experience, sent to crush out the last remnant of her
buoyant life and magnificent courage? She stared at the thing above her;
then opened her mouth and gave a scream, such as can only be the result
of full Western tracheal development.

"Oh! don't be frightened!" cried Swift quickly, "Don't! We've come to
save you!" He could not think of anything more to say; and it occurred
to him that he was a donkey to say anything.

But the professor, who had few delicate scruples, waved his hat and
shouted:

"What's the matter with the _High Tariff_? She's all right!"

This yell, so frequently heard on Eastern land and sea, had penetrated
even to the Great Gopher lake, and it reassured the girl more than
anything else could have done.

She sat up weakly enough in the boat, and, after waving her hand, with
feminine instinct tried to coil her hair and otherwise prepare herself
as best she could to receive these angels from the clouds.

"Can you catch?" yelled the professor.

"Try me!" came back a voice undaunted, though enfeebled by long
suffering.

The professor coiled a stout, light rope on his arm, shot out a few
thundering orders about safety-valves and ballast, and cautiously, but
with gymnastic quickness, descended the yielding rounds of the long
ladder.

To the lady in the boat, to the passengers in the car it seemed hours
before the professor reached the last of the two hundred rounds. It
might have been forty seconds.

Swift called out to the young lady encouragingly:

"Hold out a little while longer and you'll be safe!"

"I'm all right now, since you have come." The young woman's trembling
voice seemed to lay an actual emphasis on "you" that Swift was sel