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Show 18-YEAR-OLD BO! 15 IN THE HERO CLASS Rescues Half Frozen and Nearly Lifeless Man Marooned Ma-rooned in Tree-top. OSKALOOSA. la... Feb. 27. In a thrilling thrill-ing rescue by Ray Ellis, an 18-year-old boy, Charles Thomas was taken late Saturday Sat-urday night hall frozen and nearly lifeless life-less from a tree in the flooded and ice-packed ice-packed Des Moines river, where he had clung to the branches seven hours after seeing a companion drowned. Thomas and A. E. Rommell, Mahaska county engineers, were in a party attempting at-tempting to dynamite the ice floe when they were swept into the etream, Rommell Rom-mell perishing. Thomas caught In the top of a tree which had been submerged partly by the flood. The swollen channel filled with great cakes of ice hurled onward by the swift current, it was deemed impossible to reach Thomas until the youth, Ellis, in a frail skiff, made a perilous but successful dash through the ice to a point near where the marooned man was. Lodging his boat against two other Inundated In-undated trees to keep it from being swept downward by the current, the boy, time and again, threw a rope toward Thomas until he finally landed it near enough to the virtually helpless man so he could make it fast to a branch of the tree. Ellis secured his end to one of the trees at the boat and Thomas slid down. Death nearly balked the rescue at the last moment. In his slide down the rope. Thomas, exhausted, fell, and dropped into the water. He sunk, but the boy in the boat seized him when he came up and dragged him Into the skiff. Efforts' to break the ice pack still have been unavailing and tonight the flood was Increasing, lowlands being covered and farms threatened. |