II. TEDDY FORD

Holding Myron Langdon up in the crook of one arm, Oriole clung to the floating sled with her other hand and tried to kick herself and Myron toward the edge of the thicker ice. This was no light task. She was not at all sure that both Myron and herself would not sink as Marian had.

The girl from Bahia had been through so much tragedy during these last months that she did not give up hope easily. But the chill of the sea and the helplessness of her charge hampered Oriole dreadfully. Her progress in pushing the sled before her was slow indeed.

She had not tried to cry out for help. What would be the use? The iceboat was a long distance away and it would take many minutes for anybody aboard that craft to return to aid Oriole and the twins. And the girl had seen nobody else in the vicinity.

Suddenly, however, she saw a figure scrambling over the thick ice toward the hole where she struggled with her burden. The newcomer was a boy--a boy not much older than Oriole herself, she felt sure; and at this instant Oriole thought him the very handsomest boy she had ever seen!

He did not wear skates and he had some trouble in reaching the edge of the hole; but he came on with determination, and soon she heard him shouting:

"Hold on! Hold on! I'll get you out!"

"Get Marian! Oh, do, please, save Marian!" shrieked Oriole Putnam. "I can hang on to Myron a long time yet. And we've got the sled. Save Marian."

The boy, who had curly brown hair and a pink and white complexion, reached the edge of the broken ice and peered over the surface of the hole. Something dark rose almost to the surface and not very far out.

"I see it!" cried the stranger, who was already drawing off his coat.

Just as though it were summer and he was in his bathing suit, the boy dived into the ice-strewn water. Oriole was smitten with the thought that perhaps she had urged him to disaster. The chill of the sea was fast paralyzing her own limbs and the pressure about her heart was like that of a tightly drawn band.

She feared that she had encouraged this very good-looking boy to risk his life--and in an impossible attempt to drag forth the little girl. Oriole had not seen Marian's body rise so near the surface.

But when the big boy came up with a great splutter not far from Oriole and the sled, he bore the unconscious little girl in his arms. He trod water, standing almost erect, dashed the spray from his eyes and actually grinned at Oriole.

"I got her! The poor kid!" he cried.

It was when he smiled that Oriole saw he had such nice white teeth and that the expression of his face was very winning. She thought, even in this dangerous moment:

"He's ever so much better looking than Billy Bragg--and Billy was a nice boy, too."

Billy Bragg had been connected with the first great adventure of Oriole's life.

Brought up as she had been in the suburbs of the city of Bahia, a Brazilian metropolis, her quiet life with her mother and father, who had gone there years before from the United States, had scarcely prepared Oriole for what happened to her when the Putnam family decided to return to their own country.

Sailing on the British steamship Helvetia, the family expected to be in New York in a very few days. But the Helvetia met another and unknown ship in collision in mid-ocean and had the purser's boat not been picked up by the Adrian Marple, with Oriole as one of its rescued passengers, Oriole certainly would never have seen Harbor Light, and of course she would not have known Billy Bragg.

Billy was the cabin boy aboard the Adrian Marple. Billy was, Oriole had often told Nat Jardin and her other friends, the very nicest boy she had ever known. In spite of the fact that the cabin boy's character seemed to fit his name very closely--Bragg--the girl from Brazil always remembered Billy with interest.

Misfortune seemed to have followed hard upon Oriole Putnam. She believed her mother and father had been rescued by the ship that had collided with the Helvetia; but of this neither she nor anybody else could be positive.

The Adrian Marple, Boston bound from Mediterranean ports, suffered disaster, as well as the ship on which Oriole had sailed from Bahia, although in a different way. She "stubbed her toe," as old Nat Jardin, the lightkeeper, said, upon the Camper Reef off Harbor Island, and although Billy Bragg and Oriole were together when the steamship struck and Oriole was saved by the lightkeeper himself, she had never seen Billy since the hour of the wreck.

She often thought of Billy Bragg, as well as of her own dear mother and father. The uncertainty of her parents' safety had at first made Oriole very sad, although the lightkeeper and Ma Stafford, his housekeeper, loved and protected the girl as though she were their very own.

The fresh environment of Harbor Island gradually cheered Oriole and she came to the conclusion that her mother and father had been carried away around the world by the ship that had collided with the Helvetia. That ship might be a sailing vessel, and she knew that if it was so, and Mr. and Mrs. Putnam were aboard of it, it might be months and months before they reached an American port.

As related in a previous volume entitled "When Oriole Came to Harbor Light," many adventures had come to Oriole since she had landed upon the rock-riven island near which she was now struggling in the icy water. But nothing had really been as serious as this present predicament.

She feared that she could not much longer bear Myron, the boy twin, up above the sea. She tried to place him on the sled, but failed. If she had not been able to cling to the sled she would have gone down herself.

And what could she ever say to Mr. Harvey Langdon if she allowed either of the twins to drown? The big Western ranchman had only recently come East to recover his children after the wreck of the Portland steamboat. Myron and Marian had been saved from that disaster by Nat Jardin and Oriole; but the children's nurse, who had been with them, had received a heavy blow on the head and had not as yet recovered her memory.

Much against Oriole's and Nat Jardin's desires, the twins had been placed in the town orphan asylum and might never have been discovered by their father had not Oriole written and paid for an advertisement in the newspapers that drew the ranchman East in his search for his lost children.

That Mr. Langdon trusted her so fully with the twins was the thought that now so keenly rasped Oriole's mind. If the twins were lost--drowned! The thought was indeed shocking.

And then she saw this handsome boy who had come to her help lift the little saturated body of Marian out upon the thick ice. He turned swiftly and reached the sled in two strokes. He seized Myron just as Oriole's hold was slipping.

"Hang on to that sled, girl!" commanded the boy earnestly. "I'll come back for you."

"My--my name's Oriole Putnam," gasped Oriole faintly. But the boy evidently did not hear.

He raised Myron, who struggled a little and sputtered too, high in his arms and cast the boy out upon the ice beside his sister. Oriole began to kick again and force the sled nearer the thick ice.

"All right, girl!" shouted the very vigorous and able boy. "I'm going to lift you up, and you grab hold of the ice and try to pull yourself out."

He did as he said he would and Oriole tried to do as he commanded. It was a hard struggle, but it did not last many seconds. She found herself face downward on the ice, her feet still in the water, and kicking vigorously.

Oriole never had seen such a quick and muscular boy as this one. Even Billy Bragg had not been able to perform such feats of strength and agility. The stranger raised himself quickly upon the sled, which sank slowly under him; and then the boy scrambled out to the ice and drew the sled up after him.

"There!" he chattered, yet grinning, too. "I've saved the whole crew and the sled into the bargain. Where--where shall we take these kids?"

"Oh! To the island. Up there to Ma Stafford and Uncle Nat," cried Oriole, and she struggled to her feet and pointed to the bluff on which stood the old house where Nat Jardin and Ma Stafford now lived.

"Come on, girl," said the stranger, offering her a hand to steady her on her feet. "If you can carry yourself I'll take the kids."

"Can you carry both Myron and Marian?"

"I reckon," said the boy carelessly. "Gee! ain't it cold?"

"My name is--is Oriole Putnam," chattered the girl.

"Don't be so particular," said the boy, hurriedly grabbing at Myron and Marian. "My name's Teddy Ford. And I guess nobody knows me much around here, so there isn't anybody to introduce us. Come on! You'll freeze stiff."

Little Marian's coat had already frozen to the ice. She looked so blue in the face, with her eyes shut so tight, that Oriole was terribly frightened about her. Myron sputtered and squalled his objections when Teddy Ford dropped him on the ice again to tear his sister loose from the frost-hold.

"Run!" commanded the boy. "You'll get your death of cold. What's your name?"

"I--I tell yu-yu-you it--it's Oriole," chattered the girl.

"All right. You're a bird, Oriole. Fly!"

Thus adjured Oriole started at a rather stiff-legged trot across the ice. She had lost her skates in the water (and it was lucky for her she had) and found plowing over the ice a very uncertain procedure. But Teddy Ford seemed to be as sure footed as a cat!

He hugged a twin under each arm and ran after Oriole, soon overtaking her.

"Where's that place you are going to? Is there a fire?" he demanded.

"The cottage. Up there. On the island."

"Not to the lighthouse?" panted the boy.

"No, no! Uncle Nat and Ma are at this cottage. It is nearer, anyway."

"That is what we want--the nearest place. Gee! don't fall."

"I wish you would--wouldn't say that," admonished the chattering Oriole.

"Say what?"

"'Gee.' It sounds like driving ox--oxen. And I'm no--not an ox."

"Gee!" ejaculated Teddy Ford. Then: "Oh! I didn't meanter. I mean 'mean to.' You're--you're awful particular, ain't you?"

But Oriole was too cold to answer. This was no time and place, after all, to be "particular."

She fell down once--flat on her face and bumped her chin. But she scrambled up again before the boy could drop the twins to help her.

"Go on! Go on!" she begged. "Don't stop for me!"

"You see that you come, then," he shouted back at her, and hurried ahead, landing and climbing up the path to the top of the bluff several rods ahead of Oriole.

He had not actually known how very badly off Oriole Putnam was. She was as brave as girl could be, but she was chilled to the very marrow (or so Ma Stafford would have said) and when the boy had left her she made but slow headway.

Indeed, the girl was well nigh exhausted--she scarcely had breath to cry out--when the door of the old house opened and Nat Jardin put his head out to see who was approaching.