CHAPTER XII

TOMMY SAVES HIS ENEMY

Tommy Tiptop was thinking quickly. He was a plucky lad, and he did not give up hope in the face of danger. But he could not seem to help himself.

Again and again he tried to loosen his foot from where it was caught in a crack in the wheel, but he could not get free. He knew what would happen soon. The water, which came into a sort of long, wooden box, from the mill pond, ran underneath the big wheel, and, by striking on the wooden buckets or pockets, turned the wheel over, and had thus, in the times when the mill was running, moved the grindstones.

“I’ll be carried over until I get on the bottom,” thought Tommy, “and then I’ll be drowned, or crushed.”

He was not mistaken. The wheel was moving slowly, and he realized that only a part of the force of water was, as yet, striking the buckets. As the boys opened the gate wider, more water would come in the long, narrow box, and the wheel would turn over faster.

“If I could only untie my shoe, and slip my foot out!” thought Tommy. He had once read of a boy who got his foot caught in a switch on a railroad track. The lad pulled and tugged, but his foot was held fast, and a train was approaching at great speed.

Suddenly that boy had unlaced his shoe, pulled out his foot, and saved himself. Tommy made up his mind to try the same trick. He leaned forward to get at the laces, but he found that he could not reach them in the position in which he was held.

“That won’t do,” he decided. He could still hear Sam and Jakie at the water gate. They seemed to be having some trouble raising it.

And then another thought came to our hero. He must shout for help. Why had he not thought of that before? The two boys who had raced after him, though mean bullies, would not want him to be seriously hurt. They had only meant to have fun with him in their rough, cruel way, and they had no idea that he was fast on the mill wheel.

“I’ll call to them!” decided Tommy, and, somehow, though it was to save his life, he almost disliked to do it. But there was no help for it. The wheel was moving faster now.

“Help! Help!” sung out Tommy. “I’m on the mill wheel! Caught fast! Turn off the water! Help! Help!”

He waited a moment, hoping for an answer.

None came. He could still hear the splashing of the water and the laughter and shouts of the two boys in a distant part of the mill.

“They can’t hear me!” thought Tommy. This idea caused him to make harder efforts than before to loosen his foot, but he could not. Then he called again.

“Help! Help! I’m on the mill wheel!”

There was a sudden rush of water, so loud that it almost smothered Tommy’s cries in his own ears, and he knew that he could scarcely be heard ten feet away. At the same time the wheel gave a sudden lurch and swung far over. Tommy could see down below him a dark tunnel, filled with foaming, rushing water.

“Help! Help!” he cried, desperately.

Then he saw something else. It was a man—a man in rather ragged clothes, who sprang into the mill through one of the broken windows. The man made a rush for the wheel. Tommy closed his eyes, wishing it was all a dream, and that he would awaken safe in bed.

He heard the rushing of waters louder now, and above them a man’s voice seemed to shout:

“Why, it’s Tommy Tiptop! Who started that wheel? I’ve got to stop it!”

Something hit Tommy on the head, and everything got black around him. There was a roaring in his ears, and when he opened his eyes he found himself staring up toward the dusty beams of the ceiling of the old