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CHAPTER XXIV
THE NIGHT ALARM
Wyn Mallory had “another mind,” as the saying is, before the Go-Aheads left the island and paddled swiftly for their own camp.
She determined not to say anything to her girl friends of the club about the sunken object she had hit under the water. Perhaps it was nothing of any consequence; then they would laugh at her. If it was the lost motor boat, to tell the girls might spread the story farther than it ought to be spread at once.
The Go-Aheads and the Busters were rivals. Mr. Lavine had promised the prize to whichever club found the sunken boat and the box of silver images that Dr. Shelton had accused John Jarley of stealing.
“And it may not be anything, after all,” thought Wyn. “It may be a false alarm. Then the boys would have the laugh on us.”
To make sure of what she had hit when she dived seemed to Wyn to be the principal thing. And how could she make sure of this without going down specially to examine the mystery?
“How under the sun am I going to do that without the boys seeing me?” she mused. “And if I take the girls into my confidence they will all want to be there, too–and then sure enough the Busters will catch us at it. Dear me! I don’t know what to do–really.”
She had half a mind to take Frank into her confidence; but, then, Frank was such a joker. The girls and boys had often talked about hunting for the missing motor boat; but since Mr. Lavine had gone back to Denton, after the regatta, neither club had seriously attempted a search for the Bright Eyes.
Polly had told Wyn how men from Meade’s Forge had searched for the boat when she was first lost; and some of the bateau men had kept up the search for a long time. Had the motor boat and the silver images been found, Dr. Shelton might have been obliged to pay a large reward to obtain them, for not all of the bateau men of the lake were honest.
“Some of them bothered father a good deal while he was first laid up from his accident, coming by night and trying to get him to give them details which he hadn’t given to the other searchers. They thought he must know just where the Bright Eyes was sunk,” Polly had told the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. “But they got tired of that after a while. They saw he really did not know what had become of the boat.”
Polly! She was the one to confide in, Wyn decided. And the captain of the Go-Ahead Club did not decide upon this until after the other girls in the big tent, and Mrs. Havel, were all asleep. Wyn had been awake an hour wondering what she would better do.
Now, convinced that the boatman’s daughter would be a wiser as well as safer confidante at this stage than Frank or the others, Wyn wriggled out of her blanket and seized her bathing suit. It was a beautiful warm night. She was no more afraid of the woods and lake at this hour than she was by daylight.
So she slipped into the suit, got out of the tent without rousing any of the others, selected her own paddle from the heap by the fireplace, and ran barefooted down to the shore. It took but a minute to push her canoe into the water.
She paddled away around the rushes at the end of the strip of sand below the knoll, driving the canoe toward the Jarley Landing. Out of the rushes came a sudden splashing, and some water-fowl, disturbed by her passing, spattered deeper into hiding.
Wyn only laughed. The warm, misty night wrapped her around like a cloak; yet there was sufficient light on the surface of the lake for her to see her course a few yards ahead.
This was a real adventure–out in her canoe alone in the dark. And how fast she made the light craft travel through the still water!
She reached the landing in a very short time. Hopping out, she hauled up the canoe. Was that the water splashing–or was there a sound behind her on the float? Was it a footstep–somebody hastening away?
Now, for the first time, Wyn felt a little tremor. But she was naturally too brave to be particularly disturbed by such a fancy. Who would be lurking about the Jarleys’ place at this hour?
So, after a moment, she shook off her doubt, and ran lightly up the float and along the path to the little cottage. She knew Polly’s window well enough, and dark as it was, she soon found the spot.
It was shuttered, and the shutter was bolted on the inside; but Wyn scratched upon the blind and after doing so a second time she heard a movement within.
“Polly!” she breathed.
She did not want to awaken Mr. Jarley. She just felt that she could not explain to him. Of course, what she had hit under the water might have nothing to do with the sunken boat, and Wyn shrank from disturbing the boatman himself about it.
“Polly!” she exclaimed, again in a whisper, “it’s I–Wyn–Wyn Mallory.”
At once she heard her friend’s voice in return. The shutter opened. Polly blinked at Wyn through the darkness.
“My dear! What do you want? What has happened?” asked the girl of the woods.
“Come on out–do, Polly. I’ve got something to tell you. Just put on your bathing suit,” Wyn whispered.
“For pity’s sake! What is it?”
“Don’t awaken your father. Come.”
“Just a minute,” whispered the sleepy Polly, and in not much longer than the time stated she crept through the window.
“I’d wake father if I went out by the door,” she said. “Now come down to the landing. What are you doing ’way over here at this time o’ night?”
“I have the most surprising thing to tell you.”
“What about?”
“I wish you’d go over to Gannet Island with me and see if I’m right. The moon will be up bye and bye; won’t it?”
“Yes. But what do you mean? What is the mystery?” inquired Polly. Then she seized Wyn’s arm and demanded that she “Hush!” although Wyn’s lips were not open at the moment.
“I declare I thought I heard something just then,” whispered Polly.
“You’re bound to hear things in the dark,” returned Wyn, cheerfully.
“But it was somebody coughing.”
“A bird?” ventured Wyn. “I heard one splashing in the sedges as I came along in the canoe.”
“A bird clearing its throat?” laughed Polly. “Not likely!”
She did not bother about it again, but squeezed Wyn’s arm. “Tell me what the matter is. It must be something very important to bring you ’way over here alone at night.”
“That’s right. It is,” replied Wyn, and she related to Polly the thing that was troubling her.
“And, oh, Polly! if that thing I hit under the water should be that boat – ”
“Oh, Wyn! What would father say?”
“He’d be delighted. So would we all. And we must find out for sure.”
“I’ll tell him in the morning. We’ll go there and see – ”
But Wyn stopped her. She showed her how necessary it was for the matter to be looked into secretly. Mr. Lavine had promised to give a motor boat to whichever club found the sunken Bright Eyes and the silver images. And the Busters must not know a thing about it until they were sure —
“Then Mr. Lavine believes father’s story about the boat?” burst in Polly.
“I believe he does, Polly, dear. I think, Polly, that he would be very, very glad to have Mr. Jarley cleared of all suspicion. He is sorry for your father’s trouble. I think his attitude, toward your father has changed from what it must have been at one time.”
“It ought to be!” exclaimed Polly.
“Of course. But we none of us always do all we ought to do,” observed Wyn mildly.
“If we are going to try and find that place where you dived to-day, Wyn, we’d better be about it,” Polly urged.
“You’ll go now?” cried Wyn.
“Of course I will. The boys will be asleep up in their camp. We will take the Coquette. There is a breeze.”
“Let’s tow my canoe behind, then,” said Wyn, eagerly. “Come on! I’m just crazy to dive for the thing again. If it is the Bright Eyes– ”
Polly insisted upon hunting out a couple of old blankets to wrap about them if the wind should turn chill.
“And after you have been overboard you’ll want something to protect you from the night air,” she said.
“Oh, Polly! do you suppose I can find the place again?” cried Wyn, infinitely more eager than the boatman’s daughter.
“You say it’s right off the boys’ float? Well! we can look, I guess.”
“Feel, you mean,” laughed Wyn. “For I couldn’t see anything down there even by daylight–it was so deep.”
“All right. We’ll look with our hands. I shall know if it’s a boat, Wyn, once I reach it.”
“And I hope it is” gasped Wyn. “Not alone for your sake, Polly. Why, if it is the Bright Eyes, the Go-Aheads will own a motor boat their very own selves. Won’t that be fine?”
But Polly was too busy getting the catboat ready to answer. The Coquette was moored just a little way off the landing, and the two girls went out to her in Wyn’s canoe.
There was a lantern in her cuddy and Polly lit it. Then they slipped the buoyed moorings and spread a little canvas. There was quite a breeze, and it was fair for their course to Gannet Island. Soon the catboat was laying over a bit, and the foam was streaking away behind them in a broad wake.
“What a lovely night!” sighed Wyn. “And it will be the very gladdest night I ever saw if that thing I hit proves to be the Bright Eyes.”
Polly had glanced behind them frequently. “Don’t you hear anything?” she asked finally.
“Hear what?”
“Hush! that’s somebody getting up a sail. Can’t you hear it?”
Wyn listened, and then murmured: “Your ears must be sharper than mine, Polly. I hear nothing but the slap of the water.”
“No. There is another sailboat under weigh. Where can it be from?”
“You don’t suppose your father was aroused, and is coming after us?” asked Wyn.
“Of course not. Beside, the Coquette is the only sailing boat–except a canoe–that we have at present. The other cat is loaned for a week. And I heard the hoops creaking on the mast as a heavy sail went up.”
“Some crowd of fishermen?” suggested Wyn.
“But where’s their light?”
Wyn stared all around. “You’re right,” she gasped. “There isn’t a single twinkling lantern–except ashore.”
Polly, sitting in the stern seat, reached for their own lantern and smothered its rays. “We won’t show a gleam, either,” she muttered.
“Why! who could it possibly be?” cried Wyn. “Do you think somebody may be following us?”
“I don’t know,” returned Polly, grimly. “But I thought I heard something back there at our house. We were talking loud. If those silver images were worth all Dr. Shelton says they were, there are more than us girls who would like to find them.”
“My goodness me! I didn’t think of that,” observed Wyn Mallory, with a little shiver. “Do you suppose we really are being followed?”
CHAPTER XXV
THE STRANGE BATEAU
Polly laughed a little. Yet she spoke seriously.
“You needn’t be so worried, Wyn. I know most of the men who do business on the lake. Some of them are mighty fine fellows, and others are just the opposite; but I’m not afraid of the worst of them.”
“If they followed us, and we did find the sunken motor boat, couldn’t they grapple for the box of silver images, and steal them?” demanded Wyn.
“Not easily. You see, they don’t know where the box was stowed. Father told nobody but me. The Bright Eyes was a good-sized boat, and they’d have some trouble getting up the box without raising the boat herself.”
“I suppose that’s so,” admitted Wyn, less anxiously, as the Coquette carried them swiftly toward Gannet Island. “But these men you speak of might interfere with us.”
“Yes. That’s so. But they’d get as good as they sent, I reckon,” said Polly, who didn’t seem to have a bit of fear.
Wyn was no coward; she had shown that the time she and Bessie Lavine were spilled out of their canoes in the middle of the lake. But she had not lived, like Polly, in the woods with few but rough people for associates.
Soon they passed Green Knoll Camp, lying peacefully in the light of the moon that was just then rising above the Forge. Its rays silvered all the knoll and made the camp a charming spot.
“I hope none of them will wake up and find me gone,” remarked Wyn, chuckling.
Polly gave the tiller and sheet to her friend and stood up to get a better view of the lake astern of them. At first she saw nothing but the dim shores and the silvering water. Then, some distance out, Polly caught sight of a ghostly sail drifting across the path of moonlight.
“A bateau!” she exclaimed. “And–with the wind the way it is–she must have come right out of our cove, Wynnie.”
“Do–do you really think anybody was listening to us when we were talking there on the landing, Polly?” Wyn asked. “And are they aboard that bateau?”
“I don’t know. But I know I heard something then.”
“But that boat isn’t following us.”
“It may be. We can’t tell. They can watch us just as easily as we can watch them.”
But when the Coquette got around to the side of Gannet Island where the boys’ camp was established, the shadow of the high, wooded ridge was thrown out so far across the lake that the swimming raft and its neighborhood were in darkness.
The catboat, with her sail dropped and her nose just touching the edge of the float, was quite hidden by this shadow of the island, which was all the darker in contrast with the brilliant moonlight lying on the water farther out.
“I’ll carry the kedge to the float,” whispered Polly, “and then we’ll pay out the line till the Coquette floats about over the spot where you think the thing you hit lies.”
“Let’s get my canoe out of the way, too,” urged Wyn. “Oh! I hope the boys will not wake up.”
“What’s that light up there?” exclaimed Polly, suddenly.
“That’s the spark of their campfire. It’s in the rocks, so no harm can come from it; they don’t trouble to cover it when they go to bed.”
“Now, Wyn–push the boat off.”
They worked the catboat from the float for several yards. “Wait,” whispered Wyn. “Let’s try here.”
“Are you going to dive?”
“Yes. It will make some splash; but I don’t believe I can reach the bottom of the lake otherwise, it is so deep here.”
“Careful!” cautioned Polly. “You may hurt yourself on whatever is down there.”
“I’ll look out,” returned Wyn, again filling her ears with cotton. She slipped off the skirt of her bathing suit, too, so as to have more freedom. Then she poised herself for a moment on the decked-over part of the sailboat–a slim, lithe figure in the semi-darkness–and gradually bent over with her arms outstretched to part the water.
As she dived forward she thought she heard a quick exclamation from Polly; but Wyn believed it to be an encouraging cry. At least, she gave it no attention as she clove the water and went down, down, down into the depths of the lake.
She opened her eyes, but, of course, saw nothing but a great, shadowy mass below her. Toward this mass she swam eagerly; the lake seemed much deeper than it had by daylight.
Struggling against the uplift of the water, she beat her way down into the depths for more than a minute. That was a goodly length of time for the first submersion. And she did not reach the bottom, nor find any object like the thing she had struck against some hours before.
It was necessary for her to rise. As she turned over, a luminous spot appeared over her head, and toward this spot she sprang. With aching chest she reached the surface, and sprang breast high out of the water–some yards from the catboat. There was a strong current here.
“Polly!” she gasped.
“Sh!” hissed her comrade’s voice, in warning.
Surprised, Wyn obeyed the warning. Causing scarcely a ripple in the water, she paddled to the boat. There she clung to the rail and listened. She could not see Polly.
“Dunno where they went to in that cat, Eb,” growled a hoarse voice out of the darkness.
Wyn darted a glance over her shoulder. There, looming gray and ghostly, was the tall sail they had seen once before. The strange, square-nosed bateau was drifting by, but at some distance. Evidently the catboat was well hidden in the shadow of the island.
Suddenly Polly reached over the edge of the boat and seized Wyn’s shoulders. “Don’t try to climb in,” she whispered. “They’ll see or hear the splash.”
“All right,” breathed back the captain of the Go-Aheads.
“It’s Eb Lornigan and some of his friends. Eb is a disgrace to the lake. He’s been in jail more than once,” whispered Polly.
But Wyn’s shoulders began to feel cold. The night air, after all, was not really warm. “I’m going down again,” she whispered.
“Did–did you find it?” queried Polly.
“No. But I will,” declared the other girl, confidently, and slipped into the water.
She ventured under the bottom of the catboat and, turning suddenly, braced her feet against it, and so flung herself down into the depths.
She descended more swiftly with the momentum thus gained, traveling toward the bottom on a different slant than before. With her hands far before her she defended her head from collision with any sunken object there might be down here. And this time she actually did hit something again.
She turned quickly and grabbed at it with both hands. It seemed like a sharp, smooth pole sticking almost upright in the water. There was a bit of rag, or marine plant of some kind, attached to it.
She struggled to pull herself down by the staff, but she had been below now longer than before. Just what the staff could be she did not imagine until she had again turned and “kicked” her way upward.
“It’s the pennant staff of the sunken boat!” she gasped, as she came to the surface and could open her mouth once more.
“Hush! what’s the matter with you?” demanded Polly, in a low voice, directly at hand.
“Oh! have they gone?”
“The bateau is out of hearing distance. But you do splash like a porpoise.”
“Nonsense! Let me climb up.”
Polly gave her some help and in a few moments Wyn lay panting in the tiny cockpit of the boat.
“Did–did you find anything?” queried Polly, anxiously.
Wyn told her what she believed she had found underneath the water, and the position of the staff. “It must be lying bow on to us here,” she said.
“Oh! do you suppose it really is the Bright Eyes?”
“It’s something,” replied Wyn, confidently, pulling one of the blankets around her.
“I’m going down myself,” declared Polly, sharply.
“All right. Maybe you can find more of the boat. It’s there.”
Polly sprang up into the bow of the catboat, poised herself for a moment and then dived overboard. She could outswim and outdive any of the Go-Ahead girls–and why not? She was in, or on, the lake from early spring until late autumn.
Polly was under the surface no longer than Wyn; but when she came up she struck out for the Coquette and scrambled immediately into the boat.
“What is it? Am I right? Is it a boat?” cried the anxious Wynnie.
“Yes! It’s there. Oh, Wynifred Mallory! My father is going to be so relieved! It’s–it’s just heavenly! How can we ever thank you?”
Wyn was crying softly. “I’m so delighted, dear Polly. It–it is sure the Bright Eyes?”
“It is a motor boat. I went right down to the deck, and scrambled around it. There are surely not two motor boats sunk in Lake Honotonka,” declared Polly.
“Hush, then!” urged Wyn. “We’ll keep still about it. It is my find and I’ll telegraph to Mr. Lavine as quick as I can. The Go-Ahead girls are going to own a motor boat! Won’t that be fine?”
“Say nothing to any of the others. I’ll tell father,” said Polly, beginning to haul in on the kedge line. “And he’ll know what to do about raising the launch. He’ll have to go to the Forge – ”
“Then he can send the message to Mr. Lavine for me. Tell him the girls have found the sunken boat, and sign my name to it. That will bring Bessie’s father up here in a hurry.”
The girls got their anchor and the canoe, and put up the sail again. As the Coquette shot away from the boys’ swimming float, the ghostly sail of the strange bateau again crossed the path of moonlight at the other end of the island.
“I’d feel better,” muttered Polly, “if those, fellows were not hanging about so close.”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BOYS TO THE RESCUE
Wyn got into her canoe in sight of Green Knoll Camp, and leaving Polly to work the Coquette home alone, paddled to the shore, drew out the canoe and turned it over on the beach with the six other canoes belonging to the camp, and so stole up the hill and prepared for bed again.
Nobody seemed to have missed her, although it was now two hours after midnight. The captain of the girls’ club felt a glow of satisfaction at her heart as she composed herself for sleep. She believed she was going to have a great and happy surprise for the girls of the Go-Ahead Club; and in addition the Jarleys would be relieved of the cloud of suspicion that had hung over Mr. Jarley ever since Dr. Shelton’s motor boat was lost.
Wyn slept so late that all the other girls were up and had run down for their morning dip ere Mrs. Havel shook her.
“You must have had your bath very early, Wynnie,” said that lady. “Here is your bathing suit all wet.”
“Yes, ma’am,” responded Wyn, sleepily.
“Now, rouse up. The whole camp is astir,” said Mrs. Havel, and Wyn was fully dressed when the other girls came back. There were not too many questions asked, so her secret remained safe.
She became considerably disturbed, however, when the hours of the forenoon passed and she neither heard from nor saw anything of the Jarleys.
Once a big bateau went drifting by and disappeared behind Gannet Island, under a lazy sail and with two men at the long sweeps, or oars. When it was lost to view Wyn was troubled by the thought that it might be the same mysterious craft that had followed the catboat the night before. Had it anchored off the boys’ camp now?
So, to calm her own mind, she suggested that they all paddle over to Cave-in-the-Wood Camp and take their luncheon with them.
“Goodness me, Wynifred!” exclaimed Bess, the boy-despiser, “can’t you keep away from those boys for a single day?”
“I notice we usually have a good time when the boys are around,” returned Wyn, cheerfully.
“Oh, they’re quite a ‘necessary evil,’” drawled Frank. “But I feel myself like Johnny Bloom’s aunt when we get rid of the Busters for a time.”
“What about Johnny’s aunt?” queried Mina.
“Why, do you know that Johnny belongs to the Scouts and one law of the Scouts is that they shall each do something for somebody each day to make the said somebody happy.”
“Rather involved in your English, Miss, but we understand you,” said Grace.
“So far,” agreed Percy Havel. “But where do Johnny Bloom and his aunt come in?”
“Why, any day he can’t think of any other kindness to render his friends,” chuckled Frankie, “he goes to see his aunt. She is so glad when he goes home again–she detests boys–that Johnny feels all the thrill of having performed a good deed.”
“Now, Frank!” laughed Wyn, “you know it isn’t as bad as all that.”
“Yes, it is,” chuckled Frankie. “You don’t know Johnny Bloom as well as his neighbors do. He lives on my street.”
“Humph! most boys are just as bad,” declared Bess. “Just the same, if Wyn says ‘Gannet Island’ I reckon we’ll all have to go.”
“And we’ll have some fun diving,” Grace Hedges declared. “I wish we had a diving float over here.”
Mrs. Havel preferred to remain at the camp and the six girls were a very hilarious party as they set forth in their canoes and fresh bathing suits for the island.
By this time every member of the Go-Ahead Club was as brown as a berry, inured to exposure in the sun, and enjoying the outdoor life of woods and lake to the full.
Mina’s timidity had worn off, Percy was not so “finicky” in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people’s feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it seemed a girl could be. Their independent, busy life on Green Knoll was doing them all a world of good.
As the little squadron of canoes drew near to the easterly end of the Island the girls were suddenly excited by a great disturbance in the bushes on the hill above them. This end of the island was exceedingly steep and rocky.
“Oh, what’s that?” cried Mina, as some object flashed into view for a moment and then disappeared.
“It’s one of the goats,” squealed Frankie.
Gannet Island was grazed by a good-sized herd of goats, but they remained mostly at this end and kept away from the boys’ camp at the other. The girls had seldom seen any of the herd, although they had heard the kids bleating now and then, and the boys had described the old rams and how ugly they were.
Here, right above them, was going on a striking domestic wrangle, for in a moment they saw that two of the rams were having a set-to among the bushes on the side-hill, while several mild-eyed Nannies and their progeny looked on.
The rams would back away a little in the brush and then charge each other. When their hard horns collided, they rang like steel, and several times the antagonists were both overborne by the shock and rolled upon the ground.
“What a place for a fight!” exclaimed Frank. “What do you know about that, girls?”
“It’s a shame,” quavered Mina. “Somebody ought to separate them.”
“Sure! I vote that you go right up and do so, Miss Everett,” said Grace, briskly.
However, Frank’s criticism of the judgment of the combating goats was correct. It was no place for a fair fight. One of the animals happened to get “up hill” and at the next charge the lower goat was lifted completely off its feet and came tumbling down the steep descent with the speed of an avalanche.
The girls screamed, the other goats bleated–while the conquering Billie took a commanding position on a rock and gazed down upon his falling enemy. The latter could not stop. Twice he tried to scramble to his sharp little hoofs, but could not accomplish the feat. So, then, quite helpless, he fell the entire distance and came finally, with a mighty splash, into the deep water under the bank.
“Oh! the poor creature will be drowned!” cried Wyn, in great distress at this catastrophe, although some of the other girls were inclined to laugh, for the goat did look more than a little comical.
He had been battered a good deal and had received a wound upon one side of his face that did not improve his looks at all. And while he had been so lively and pugnacious up on the hillside, now he splashed about in the lake quite helplessly.
The shore of the island just here was altogether too abrupt to afford the unlucky goat any foot-hold. And the goat is not naturally an aquatic animal.
“Come on!” urged Bessie. “Let’s leave him. We can’t do any good here.”
“Of course we can help him,” cried Wyn. “Grab him by the other horn, Frank!”
She had driven her own canoe to the far side of the goat and now seized the beast’s horn. He could not fight in the water and Wyn and Frank slowly guided him along the shore until they reached a sloping piece of beach where he could, at least, get a footing. But he lay down, half in and half out of the water, seemingly exhausted.
“He can never climb that bank,” declared Mina.
“We’ll boost him up, then,” said Frank, with confidence. “Having set out to be twin Good Samaritans, we’ll finish the job properly; eh, Wyn?”
Her friend agreed, laughing, and both girls sprang ashore. They didn’t mind getting a little wet, considering how they were dressed.
The goat bleated forlornly as they seized upon him; he was quite all the two girls could lift, and they actually had to drag him up the steeper part of the hill by his legs.
Their friends below chaffed them a good deal, for it was a ridiculous sight. Soon, however, Wyn and Frank got their awkward burden to the mouth of an easily sloping gully, that led toward the interior of the island. As soon as he could, the animal scrambled upon his feet.
Once firmly set, however, this ungrateful goat’s temper changed most surprisingly. Or he may have felt that his dignity had been ruffled by the treatment he had received at the hands of his rescuers.
So he began stamping his little sharp hoofs and lowered his head, shaking the latter threateningly.
“What did I tell you?” called Bess, from below. “Next you two sillies know he’ll butt you.”
“Oh, come along, Wyn!” gasped Frankie. “Plague the goat, anyway!” as she dodged the enraged animal’s first charge.
The goat was headed up the gully, away from the shore, or he might have gone head first into the lake again. As the girls escaped him, Wyn, laughing immoderately, looked back. A big beech tree cropped out of the bank not far away, and under this tree she descried a figure lying.
“Oh, Frank!” she cried.
Her friend turned and saw the figure, too.
“Oh, Wyn!”
Their ejaculations seemed to have attracted Mr. William Goat’s attention to the same reclining figure. Outstretched upon the sward, with a large handkerchief over his face as a protection from gnats and other insects, and with his fat fingers interlaced across what Dave Shepard wickedly termed his chum’s “bow-window,” lay the quite unconscious Tubby Blaisdell.
“Tubby!” shrieked the girls in chorus.
The fat boy sat up as though a spring had been released. The handkerchief was still over his face, and he grunted blindly.
It was a challenge to Mr. Goat. He charged. Amid the screams of the girls the goat hurtled through the air, all four feet gathered beneath him, and landed head-and-horns in the middle of poor Tubby’s waistcoat!
It wasn’t a very big goat. ’Twas lucky for Master Blaisdell that this was so. Tubby went back with an awful grunt, heels in the air, and the goat turned a complete somersault. But the latter scrambled to his feet a whole lot quicker than did Tubby.
“Run–run, Tubby!” shrieked Frank.
“Look out for him, Ralph!” cried Wyn.
Back the goat came. This time he took Master Blaisdell from the rear and butted him so hard that he actually seemed to lift the fat boy to his feet.
The youth had scratched the handkerchief from his face, and now could see the enemy. Tubby had emitted nothing but a series of excruciating grunts; but now, when he saw the goat making ready for another charge, he met the animal with a yell, leaping into the air with his legs a-straddle, so that the Billie ran between them, and then Tubby footed it up the gully as fast as he could travel.
The goat, headed down hill again, saw his old enemies, the two girls, and made as though to attack them. Wyn and Frank, almost dead with laughter, managed to roll down the bank and so get out of the erratic goat’s sight. The other girls had only heard the noise of the conflict, and did not understand; nor could Wyn and Frankie explain when they first scrambled into their canoes.
