Chapter Two: Three Grateful Girls
"If you have life enough in you to complain, Betty, you're coming with me," insisted Mary. She kept swimming. She hoped she was swimming straight. Visibility was near zero. If she swam straight, she knew she had more than enough stamina to get them to shore. Lightning lit up the impenetrable mist around them.
Mary had a sinking feeling as she kept swimming with Betty. Her friend was an easily handled dead weight. If she was swimming straight, she figured she should have reached shore by now. Mary was swimming toward the majority of lightning flashes. She figured it was marginally more likely the bolts were hitting land than the lower altitude lake. She was getting tired.
A rowboat loomed into view. Mary grabbed an oar as it passed and croaked, "Ahoy! My friend and I are drowning here!"
A girl's voice cried out, "I'm pulling the oar, hold on!" The girl dragged them to the side of the boat.
Mary worked her way around to the back of the rowboat. "You have rope?"
"A little bit," said the girl, and threw one end down to Mary.
Mary looped the rope around Betty's chest and under her arms. She gave the end back to the girl. "Now back up and haul. Really put your back into it." Betty was now trapped against the back of the rowboat, her face out of the churning water. Mary climbed lightly over her into the rowboat. They hauled Betty up into the boat with a maniacal burst of strength. They were in.
"You are very strong, Mr.?" the girl asked.
"Mary Jones," she croaked, collapsing into the hull. "Miss Mary Jones at your service."
"The detective??" the girl marveled. "Now I can believe you beat up a white slavery ring all by yourself. Oh, I'm Mabel Quincy, by the way."
Betty was coughing to life. Mary said, "My frozen and waterlogged friend here is Betty Bloom. Lie down, Mabel; you're a lightning rod."
Mabel lay down toward them eye-to-eye with Mary. "Sure thing. You seem to know what you're doing. Sorry I mistook you for a man. It's the short hair."
"Think nothing of it," said Mary. Their new wet friend Mabel was a stunner. Her auburn hair was bedraggled around her round pretty face and intense hazel eyes. Her large breasts for her youthful age were straining at her one piece blue bathing outfit. She had the hips and bottom to match. She smiled, and Mary, who had almost died from hypothermia mere minutes ago, felt warm inside.
"I may need you for a case," Mabel said intently.
Blinding lightning boomed close by a moment later. "Gladly," said Mary, "but let's not die first." Betty and Mabel stayed down in the hull, shivering and hugging for warmth. Mary took the oars. The rowboat was being driven by wave action toward the land, Mary figured.
"Look, we're saved!" cried Betty pointing forward to land looming out of the clearing mist.
"The waves are driving us toward those rocks," said Mary.
"We're lost!" cried Betty.
"We'll have to brave the lightning," cried Mary. "Help me pull on the oars. Pull!" The three young women fought with the oars at Mary's direction and narrowly missed the sharp rocks. Moments later they grounded on a small sandy beach nestled between two deadly outcrops.
They lay exhausted on the wet beach in the pounding rain, dry land. "I thought I was dead a hundred times out there," Betty marveled. "You girls are the bees knees! Mabel, you for showing up and saving us, and Mary, for saving all of us!"
"Betty's right, Mabel," said Mary. "We would have died if not for you."