Kitabı oku: «Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XXI
THE WAY OF THE WIND
“Did you know,” said Professor Skillings, visiting Camp Green Knoll with the Busters several days later, “that there are several thousand Poles in the Wintinooski Valley?”
“You surprise me,” remarked Mrs. Havel.
“Fine things to grow beans on, Professor,” declared Dave, coming up with a brimming bucket of water from the spring.
“Not the right kind of poles, my boy–not the right kind of poles,” said the professor, smiling gently, and offering Mrs. Havel a cocoanut-cup of the sparkling water. “You see what a misunderstanding of terms will do,” the professor added, in his argumentative way. “A little knowledge–especially a little scientific knowledge–is a dangerous thing.”
“You are right, Professor,” cried Tubby, who was within hearing distance. “Did you hear about what Dr. Mackenzie’s servant girl did?”
“Dr. Mackenzie is very erudite,” commented the professor, dreamily.
“That’s right. Anyhow, the girl heard a lot of talk about bugs, and grubs, and germs, and the like–and it proves just what Professor Skillings says about the danger of knowing a little science.”
“How’s that, Tubby?” queried one of the interested young folk.
“Why, one day the doctor’s wife asked this servant for a glass of water, and the girl brought it.
“‘It has a very peculiar taste, Mary,’ said Mrs. Mackenzie.
“‘Sure, ma’am, it’s all right, ma’am. There ain’t a germ in it, for I ran it through the colander before I brought it to you, ma’am!’ says Mary. Oh, Mary had picked up some scientific notions, all right, all right!”
“I believe there would be more breeze up on Windmill Farm,” observed Wynifred Mallory.
“Wish I was up there, then,” growled Tubby, who had quite collapsed after telling his joke.
“Let’s go!” suggested Frankie.
“There will be plenty of wind bye and bye,” said Dave, thoughtfully eyeing the clouds on the horizon.
“Listen to the weather prophet,” scoffed Ferdinand.
“I tell you!” cried Frankie, jumping up. “Let’s go up into the windmill and see how far one can really see from that height. The farmer’s wife says it is a great view–doesn’t she, Wyn?”
“I’m game,” responded Wyn. “We’ll be no warmer walking than we are sitting here talking about the heat.”
She and Frankie and Dave started off ahead; but Tubby would not come, nor would Grace Hedges. The others, however, saw some prospect of amusement and were willing to pay the price.
They began to be paid for their walk as soon as they came out into the open fields of Windmill Farm. A little breeze had sprung up and, although it was fitful at first, it soon grew to a steady wind from across the lake.
The distant haze was dissipated, and when the boys and girls reached the top of the hill they were glad they had come.
“I bet we have a storm bye and bye,” Dave said. “But isn’t the air up here cool?”
“Let’s climb up into the loft,” Frank urged. “The farmer’s wife said we could.”
“They’re all away from home to-day,” Wyn said. “But I don’t believe they will mind. When we came up for the milk this morning Mrs. Prosser told us they were going on a Sunday school picnic.”
“I’d like to set the old thing to working,” remarked the inquisitive Ferdinand. “What do you know about it, Dave?”
“It starts by throwing in this clutch,” replied the bigger boy, just inside the door. “If the wind keeps on the farmer will probably grind a grist when he comes back. You see, there are several bags of corn and wheat yonder.”
The girls were already finding their way up the dusty ladders, from loft to loft of the tower. Frank got to the top floor first and called out her delight at the view.
“Come on up!” she cried. “There is plenty of room. It’s bigger up here than you think–and the breeze is nice. There are two windows, and that makes a fine draught.”
The boys trooped up behind the Go-Aheads–all but Ferdinand. But none of them missed him for some minutes.
What a view was obtained from the window of the mill! The whole panorama of Lake Honotonka and its shores, with a portion of the Wintinooski Valley, lay spread like a carpet at their feet–woods and fields, cultivated land in the foreground, the rocky ridges of Gannet Island, Jarley’s Landing, the Forge, the steep shore of the lake beyond the Wintinooski, and so around to the fine houses in Braisely Park and the smoke of the big city to the west.
In the midst of their exclamations there came a sudden jar through the heavily-timbered building that startled them.
“What’s that?” cried Mina.
“An earthquake!” laughed Frankie.
“It’s the sails!” yelled Dave, starting for the ladder. “What are you doing down there, Ferd?”
The groaning and shaking continued. The arms of the windmill were going round and round–every revolution increasing their speed.
“Stop that, Ferd!” shouted Dave again, starting to descend the ladder.
“Isn’t that just like a boy?” demanded Bess, in disgust. “He just had to fool with the machinery.”
“What do you suppose the miller will say?” queried Wyn, anxiously.
The roar of the whirling arms almost drowned their voices. The wind had increased to a brisk breeze. With the sails so well filled the arms turned at top-notch speed. The tower shook as though it were about to tumble down.
“Oh, dear me!” moaned Mina, the timid one. “Let us get out of here.”
“Why doesn’t Dave make him stop it?” shouted Frankie.
“Why doesn’t the foolish Ferd stop it himself?” was Wyn’s demand.
The other boys were already tumbling down the ladder, and the girls followed as fast as possible. It was rather dark below, and when they came to the ground floor, it was full of dancing dust-particles. Dave and Ferd were busy over the machinery near the door.
“Can’t you stop it, Dave?” shrieked Percy.
“The confounded thing is broken!” announced Dave, in disgust.
“Goodness me!” cried Frank. “I want to get out of here.”
She started for the door; but Wyn grabbed her just in time. Past the open door whirled the sails of the mill–one after the other–faster and faster. And so close were the sails to the doorway that there was not room for the very smallest of the Go-Ahead girls to get out without being struck.
Dave stared around at the others. It was almost impossible to hear each other speak–and what was there to say? Each boy and girl realized the situation in which Ferd’s meddling had placed them.
Until the wind subsided they were prisoners in the tower.
Ferd Roberts subsided into a corner, and hid his face in his hands. He had done something that scared his inquisitive soul to the very bottom.
He had started the sails, and then, in trying to throw out the clutch, he had started the millstones as well. They made most of this noise that almost deafened them.
Finally, however, Dave pushed the power belt from the flywheel, and the stones stopped turning; but there was no way of stopping the sails. To step outside the door was to court instant death, and until the wind stopped blowing it seemed as though there would be no escape.
“And the wind blows sometimes two or three days at a stretch!” cried Frankie.
“It’s lucky Tubby isn’t up here with us,” Dave said, grimly. “He would want to cast lots at once to see which one of the party should be eaten first.”
“Ugh! don’t joke like that, Dave,” begged Mina. “Maybe we will be dreadfully hungry before we get out of this place.”
“I’m hungry now,” announced Frankie.
“It is near time for luncheon,” agreed Wyn.
“‘Luncheon’! Huh!” ejaculated Dave. “I s’pose that’s the feminine of ‘lunch.’ I could eat a stack of pancakes and a whole can of beans right now. I’m too hungry for any mere ‘luncheon.’”
“Oh, dear! It’s so hot down here,” sighed Percy. “If we’ve got to stay, let’s go upstairs again, where there is some air stirring.”
“Let’s wave a signal from the window. Maybe somebody will see it and come to our rescue,” suggested Frank.
“And what could they do?” demanded Wyn, “These sails can’t be stopped from the outside; can they, Dave?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Dave. “If there was a tree near, a fellow might tie a kedge rope to it, and then throw the kedge over one of the arms. But that would tear the machinery all to pieces, I suppose, it would stop it with such a jerk.”
Just then Mina Everett uttered a shrill cry of alarm. “Look! Look!” she cried. “It’s afire! We’ll burn up in here! Oh, oh, Wynnie! what shall we do?”
The others turned, aghast There was blue smoke spurting out around the shaft above their heads.
CHAPTER XXII
THE PRISONERS OF THE TOWER
“Fire!” cried Percy Havel. “Oh! what shall we do?”
“Well, your yelling about it won’t put it out,” snapped Frank.
But Dave Shepard had sprung up the ladder and immediately announced the trouble.
“The axle is getting overheated. See that can of oil yonder, Ferd? Come out of your trance and do something useful, boy! Quick! hand me the can.”
But it was Wyn who got it to him. Dave quickly refilled the oil cups and squirted some of the lubricant into the cracks about the shaft. The smoke immediately drifted away.
“The rest of you go up where it’s cooler,” he commanded. “I will remain here and play engineer. And for goodness’ sake, pray for the wind to die down!”
The situation was really serious; nobody among the prisoners of the tower knew what to do.
While the wind swung the arms of the mill round and round, there was no chance to get out. Not that they did not all cudgel their brains within the next hour to that end. There were enough suggestions made to lead to a dozen escapes; only–none of the suggestions were practical.
It was less noisy, now that Dave had stopped the millstones; but the building continued to tremble, and the great wheel to creak.
“What a donkey the man was to let them cut his door right behind the arms,” exclaimed Frankie.
“And with no proper means of stopping the sails from inside, once the wind began to blow,” added Percy.
“No. That’s my fault,” admitted Ferdinand. “I broke the gear some way.”
“Well, if we only had an axe,” said one of the other boys, “we might cut our way out of the building on the side opposite the door.”
But Dave had already searched the mill for tools. There wasn’t even a rope. Had there been, they could have let themselves down from the high window to the ground.
“It should be against the law to build windmills without proper fire-escapes,” declared Frank, trying to laugh.
But it was hard to joke about the matter. It looked altogether too serious.
The wind continued to blow steadily–a little harder, indeed, as time passed; but the sun grew hotter. It came noon, and they knew that those at Green Knoll Camp had long since expected them back.
Finally a figure appeared upon the path far down the hill. They recognized Tubby Blaisdell trudging painfully up the slope in the hot sun, evidently an unwilling messenger from Mrs. Havel and Professor Skillings.
They began to shout to Tubby, although they knew very well it was useless. He couldn’t have heard their voices down there, even if the windmill hadn’t made so much noise.
But the girls fluttered their hats from the window and, bye and bye, the stolid fat youth, glancing up while he mopped his brow, caught sight of the signals. He halted, glared up at the window from under his hand, and then hurried his steps.
“Oh, you Tubby!” shouted Frank, at last, thrusting her tousled curls out of the window. “Can’t you help us?”
He heard these words, and looked more bewildered than ever.
“Say! what do you want?” he bellowed up at them. “Don’t ask me to climb up those ladders, for I can’t. And Mrs. Havel and the prof. say for you to come back to camp. They think a storm is coming. Besides–aren’t you hungry?”
“Hungry! why, Tub,” yelled down Ferd, “if we could only get at you, we’d eat you alive!”
Tubby looked more than a little startled, and glanced behind him to see that the way of retreat was clear.
“Well, why don’t you come down and get your lunch, then?” demanded young Blaisdell.
“We can’t,” said Wyn, and she explained their predicament.
“Can’t stop those sails?” gasped Tubby. “Why–why–Where’s the man who owns the old contraption?”
They explained further. Tubby went around to the other side and caught a glimpse of Dave playing engineer. The chums shouted back and forth to each other for some time.
Tubby wanted to see if he couldn’t stop the sails by making a grab at them.
“You do it, Tubby, and the blamed things will throw you a mile through the air,” declared Dave. “Besides, we don’t want to smash the farmer’s mill. We have done enough harm as it is. So, there’s no use in backing one of those heavy wagons into it and wrecking the sails. No. I guess we’ve got to stand it here for a while.”
They heard one of the girls calling, and Tubby lumbered around to see Frankie gesticulating from the window.
“Oh, Tubby! don’t leave us to starve–and we’re so awfully thirsty, too,” cried Wyn, pushing her friend to one side. “Get us a bucket of water from the well, first of all.”
“Gee! how am I going to get it up to you–throw it?” cackled the fat youth.
“You get the bucket–and a rope,” commanded Wyn.
“But if he can throw a rope up to us, we can get out of this fix,” Ferdinand cried. “Can’t we, Dave?” he asked of his captain, who had come up the ladders for a breath of fresh air.
“Tubby couldn’t throw a coil of rope for a cent. He couldn’t learn to use a lasso, you know.”
“And we girls could not get down on a rope,” objected Bess.
“We could lower you,” Ferd declared.
“It would have to be a pretty strong rope,” said Dave. “And maybe there isn’t anything bigger than clothes line about the farm.”
Which proved to be the case. At least, Tubby could find nothing else and finally brought the brimming bucket and the line he had found on the drying green behind the farmhouse.
“I can’t throw the thing up so high,” complained Tubby, after two or three attempts.
“Wait!” commanded Wyn.
“Hold on! Wynnie’s great mind is at work.”
“Everybody sit down and unlace his or her shoes. I want the lacings,” declared Wynifred.
“Hurray!” exclaimed Ferd. “Wait a bit, Tubby; don’t wear your poor little self to a grease spot trying to throw that rope over the mill.”
Tubby, nothing loath, sat down and breathed heavily. The day was hot in spite of the high wind.
Wyn got all the shoe strings and tied them together, with a bolt fastened to the lower end for a sinker, and let it down to the ground. There Tubby attached the end of the clothes line and they pulled it up. It was long enough, and strong enough, and Dave carefully raised the bucket of water–and oh! how good it tasted to the thirsty prisoners.
They were all provided with cups, for the Academy teachers and the Denton mothers were rather insistent on that point.
“But, oh, golly!” burst forth Frank, “if they’d only made us always carry an emergency ration.”
“We didn’t expect to be cast away on a desert island in this fashion,” said Dave.
But Wyn had another idea.
“There are melons on the back porch. I saw them there this morning. Go get us a lot, Tubby. Send ’em up by the bucket-full. And there are tomatoes in the garden, and some summer apples on that tree by the fence corner. We’ll make it all right with Mrs. Prosser. Why, say! we sha’n’t starve.”
“I’ll get you some eggs if you want ’em,” suggested the willing youth. “I hear the hens cackling.”
But all objected to raw eggs and thought the melons and fresh tomatoes would suffice.
“You go back to camp and report,” ordered Dave, through the window. “The prof, and Mrs. Havel will be having conniption fits if these girls don’t show up pretty soon. Tell ’em we’re all right–but goodness knows we want the wind to stop blowing.”
It did not seem, however, as though the wind had any such intention. After Tubby Blaisdell departed it blew even stronger.
It was hard to keep the whole party in good temper. The imprisonment was getting on their nerves. Besides, the sky was growing darker, although it was not yet mid-afternoon; and not long after the fat youth was out of sight, heavy drops of rain began to fall.
Rather, the wind whipped the raindrops in at the tower window. Patter, patter, patter, they fell, faster and faster, and in the distance thunder rumbled.
The picnicking farmers should be home ahead of this storm; yet, if they came, they could not stop the sails of the windmill. The shaft groaned and smoked, but Dave kept the oil cups filled.
Nearer and nearer came the thunder, and the lightning began to flash. Some of the girls were frightened. Nor was this a pleasant place in which to be imprisoned during an electrical storm. The tall, revolving arms seemed just the things to attract the lightning.
They all were glad–boys as well as girls–to retire to the ground floor of the mill while the elements shrieked overhead and the rain pounded upon the roof and the sails. It was really a most unpleasant situation.
CHAPTER XXIII
WYN HITS SOMETHING
In the midst of the storm a voice hailed them from outside. Dave went to the doorway and saw–through the falling rain–Farmer Prosser, standing by his horses’ heads. He had just brought his family home from the picnic and they had scurried into the house.
“What are you doing in there?” demanded the farmer. “Can’t you stop the sails?”
Dave explained, making it as light for Ferd as possible.
“Well! I’ve been expecting something like this ever since the mill was put up. We can’t do anything about it now. But I believe the wind will shift soon. And if it does, perhaps I can stop the sails from outside here.”
It was nearly dark, however, and quite supper-time, before the farmer’s prophecy came true. Then the rain suddenly ceased to fall (the thunder and lightning had long since rolled away into the distance) and the wind dropped.
The farmer and his man rigged a brake to fall against the narrow breadth of shaft which extended outside of the mill wall, and so brought pressure to bear upon the revolving axle. This helped bring the sails to a stop.
How thankfully the Go-Aheads and the Busters got out of that tower, it would be difficult to express. Professor Skillings had started up through the rain to see what he could do; but on the way he had picked up a white pebble washed out of the roadside by the rain, and there being something peculiar about it, he stopped under a hedge to examine it by the light of his pocket lamp. Then he must needs proceed with his ever-present geological hammer to break the stone in two. Long after dark his electric lamp was flashing down there on the hillside like some huge wavering firefly.
Not that he could have done a thing to help his young friends. Mrs. Prosser, the farmer’s wife, had the most practical idea of anybody; for, the minute the boys and girls were out of the mill, she insisted that they troop into the farmhouse kitchen and there sit down to her long table and “get outside of” great bowls of milk and bread, with a host of ginger cookies on the side.
So the incident ended happily after all, though Ferdinand Roberts’s spirits drooped for several days. It was well for him to suffer in spirit–as Frankie said: it might teach him a lesson. And he had to pay the farmer for the damage he had done to the machinery.
Ferdinand never had any money. He spent his allowance in advance, borrowing of the other Busters whenever he could. When he got money from home he had to sit down and apportion it all out to his creditors, and then had to begin borrowing again.
He had hard work scraping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser; but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped–only Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd’s mind that it was not honorable to borrow from a girl.
However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to the snapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple of days afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought he wanted.
“Oh, Tubby!” he cried. “Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must have that.”
Tubby looked at him out of heavy-lidded eyes, and croaked: “Snow again, brother; I don’t get your drift!”
When Ferd went from one to the other of his mates they all refused–if not quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually a pauper, with all lines of credit shut to him. It made him serious.
“If all you fellows, and the old prof., should suddenly die on me up here–what would I do?” gasped Ferd. “Why–I’d have to walk home!”
“Or swim,” said Dave, heartlessly. “You’d pawn your canoe, I s’pose.”
Speaking of swimming, that was an art in which several of the boys, as well as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside the early morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either at Green Knoll Camp, or off the boys’ camp on Gannet Island.
The boys built a good diving raft and anchored it in deep water after much hard work. The good swimmers among the girls–especially Wyn and Grace–liked to paddle over to the raft and dive from it.
Late in the afternoon the Go-Aheads had come to the raft in their canoes dressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had gone off on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not in sight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.
“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. “Now we can have a good time without those trifling boys bothering us. I’m going to learn to dive properly, Wyn.”
“Sure,” returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. “Now’s the time,” and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.
The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vast enjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat upon the edge of the float to rest.
Wyn dived overboard.
She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under the surface she turned and went deeper. She was like an otter in the water, and having stuffed her ears with cotton she felt prepared to remain below a long time.
Once she had opened her eyes while diving with Bess, and she thought she saw a shadowy something on the bottom of the lake that was neither a boulder nor a waterlogged snag.
She beat her way to the bottom as rapidly as possible; but the light did not follow her. She could see nothing when she opened her eyes. It seemed as though something overshadowed her.
The water was tugging at her; she could not remain below for long. But as she turned to drift up again, her shoulder touched something. She struck out and reached it. But the blow really pushed her away and she floated upward toward the surface.
When she paddled to the raft she was panting, and Frank demanded:
“What’s the matter, Wyn? You look as if you’d seen a ghost I believe you stay down too long.”
“No,” gasped Wyn. “I–I hit something.”
“What was it?”
“Why–why, it looked like a wagon. ’Twas something.”
“I suppose so!” laughed Frank. “Wagon with a load of hay on it–eh?”
Wyn said nothing more. She sat upon the float, with her knees drawn up and hugged in her brown arms, and thought. The other girls could get nothing out of her.
She wasn’t dreaming, however. She was thinking to a serious purpose.
It had looked like a wagon–as much as it looked like anything else. But, of course, she had seen it very dimly. She knew by the touch that it was of wood; but it was no waterlogged tree, although there was slime upon it It was not rough; but smooth.
Of course, it wasn’t a wagon. Nor was it a huge box. Neither wagon nor box could have got out here, fifteen or twenty rods off Gannet Island.
Wyn glanced over toward the island and saw that she could look right into the cove where John Jarley had met with his accident. According to the boatman’s story, as he went overboard from the motor boat he gave the wheel a twist that should have shot her directly out of the cove toward the middle of the lake.
“But suppose the boat didn’t respond, after all, to the twist of the wheel?” Wyn was thinking. “Or, suppose the slant of the rudder was not as great as he supposed?”
She fixed in her mind about the spot where the thing lay she had hit, and then glanced back to the tree on the bank of the cove, that showed the long scar where the branch was torn off.
The line between the two was clear. The motor boat might have run out exactly on that course and missed the wooded point which guarded the entrance to the cove.
Suppose the thing she had hit when she dived was the Bright Eyes, Dr. Shelton’s lost motor boat?
Wyn was about to shout to the other girls–to call them around her to divulge the idea that had come into her mind–when a hail from the water announced the return of the Busters.
She remembered Mr. Lavine’s promise. The two clubs were rivals in this matter. Wouldn’t it be a fine thing for the Go-Aheads to own a motor boat all by themselves!
Wyn got up and dived again. But she did not dive toward the mysterious something that she had previously found. She swam stoutly instead to meet the coming Busters.
