Kitabı oku: «Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club», sayfa 12

“Poor Tubby! Poor Tubby!” was all Wyn could say. “Let’s paddle around to the boys’ camp. He’s run for home.”

“It was a home run, all right!” gasped Frank.

But three minutes later, when the canoes got into the cove where Polly’s father had met with his accident in the Bright Eyes, Wyn suddenly found something more serious than Tubby Blaisdell’s experience to worry about. There was the big bateau, its sail furled, almost over the spot where Wyn and Polly were sure the lost motor boat lay!

“Oh, dear me!” cried Bess. “Now we can’t have any fun on the raft. Those men will be in our way. What do you suppose they are poking around there in the water with those poles for?”

Wyn began to paddle fast. She shot ahead of the other girls and aimed directly for the bit of beach on which the boys’ canoes were drawn.

The noise and laughter up at the camp assured her that Tubby had arrived and that all the Busters were at home. Wyn had made up her mind quickly that, if she must, she would rather take the boys into her confidence about the sunken boat than let those bateau men find it.

“Boys! Dave!” she hailed them from the water.

Young Shepard appeared at once and, seeing Wyn, ran down to the shore.

“Will you help us?” gasped Wyn. “Quick! get the boys! Move your diving float where I tell you; those men will find it first, if you don’t.”

“Find what?” demanded Dave. “Are you sensible, Wynnie?”

The explanation tumbled out of Wyn Mallory’s lips then in rather a jumbled fashion; but Dave understood. He turned and gave the view-halloa for his mates. They all tumbled down the bank save Tubby.

“Get a move on, fellows,” commanded the leader of the Busters. “We’ve got to move that raft. Wyn will tell us where. And later we’ll tell you why. But the word is now: Look sharp!”

CHAPTER XXVII
IS IT THE “BRIGHT EYES”?

With a whirl and clash of paddles the little flotilla of canoes shot out to the diving float. The bateau was only a few yards away. The two rough-looking men in her were sounding the lake bottom, with long poles; but as yet they had not got around to the right spot.

Wyn breathlessly told the boys to move the raft to the place to which she paddled. The other girls were excitedly asking questions but neither Wyn nor Dave answered.

The captain of the Go-Aheads thought that if the raft could be held stationary–anchored in some way–directly over the sunken boat, the prize would be safe until Mr. Jarley, or somebody else in authority, came to claim the Bright Eyes. Of course, providing this sunken boat was she.

Polly had seemed so positive, and so eager to get her father started after the motor boat he had lost, that Wyn could not understand why the Jarleys were not already on the spot.

“Hey, there! what are you boys doing?” demanded one of the bateau men, hailing Dave and his friends on the raft.

“Moving our float,” replied the captain of the Busters, promptly.

“Well, don’t you git in our way,” said the man, crossly.

“Hel-lo!” exclaimed the saucy Ferd Roberts. “I’ve always wondered who owned Lake Honotonka, and now I know.”

“You’ll know a whole lot more if you don’t look out, Young Fresh,” growled the other boatman.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” laughed Ferd. “But I’m not going to school to you, Mister.”

“Do be quiet, Ferd,” advised Dave. “Now, Wynnie! What do you say to this?”

Meantime the boys had raised the two big stones that served the raft as anchors, and had poled the float near to Wyn’s canoe.

“Oh! a little farther, Dave, please,” cried the anxious girl.

“Say! I wanter know what you young ones are up to?” repeated the first boatman.

“Can’t you see?” returned Dave. “We’re shifting our raft.”

“What for?”

“Cat’s fur! To make kittens’ breeches of, ’cause we couldn’t get dog fur–now do you know?” snapped Ferd.

“Shut up, Ferd!” commanded Dave, again.

“He’d better shut up,” growled the man, “or something’ll happen to him–the young shrimp!”

“Oh, dear me, Wyn!” cried Bessie Lavine; “let’s go back to camp.”

“You’d all better scatter–both gels and boys,” said the boatman, threateningly. “We’re busy here an’ we don’t want to be bothered by shrimps.”

“I guess we’ll stay a while longer, Mister,” Dave said, boldly.

“We were here first,” cried the irrepressible Ferd.

“You youngsters air in our way. Get out,” commanded the Boatman.

He was working the bateau nearer to the raft, using one of the long sweeps for that purpose.

“Heave over the anchors again, fellows,” said Dave, quietly. “Then stand by with your paddles to repel boarders. We mustn’t let ’em have the raft, or move it.”

“Oh, Wyn!” begged Mina Everett, “let’s go away.”

The girls had all paddled near Wyn Mallory. Now they clustered about her in plain anxiety. The boys had climbed upon the raft and all five were plainly intending to offer resistance to the ugly boatmen.

“Now, girls,” begged the captain of the Go-Aheads, firmly, “let us show some courage, at least. The boys are willing to fight our battle – ”

“Our battle?” gasped Bessie. “What do you mean?”

In a whisper Wyn explained to the wondering and frightened girls what it was all about.

“Polly and I believe the lost motor boat lies right beneath us here. We must keep those men off, for they are hunting for the sunken boat, too,” concluded Wynnie.

“My goodness! how exciting!” cried Grace Hedges.

“And we’ll actually win the prize your father offered us, Bess!” gasped Percy Havel.

“I don’t see that we have had much to do with it,” said Frank. “Wyn made the discovery.”

“What is for one is for all,” declared Wynnie. “But we won’t win Mr. Lavine’s prize unless the boat is raised and the silver images are delivered to Dr. Shelton. If those men get hold of the boat – ”

Suddenly one of the boatmen–a long-legged fellow with a cast in one eye and lantern jaws sparsely covered with sandy whisker–came forward to the bow of the bateau and poised himself for a leap to the diving float.

“Keep off!” Dave warned him, swinging his paddle over his head. “You jump over here and you’ll catch this where Kellup caught the hen–right in the neck! You let us alone and we’ll let you alone.”

The boatman told him, in no very choice language, what he would do to Dave when he caught him; but the captain of the Busters did not appear to be much shaken.

“Hold, on, Eb!” yelled the other boatman. “I’ll run that raft down and spill ’em all off.”

“You try it and you’ll likely smash your boat,” shouted Dave. “I warn you.”

Mina Everett began to cry softly, for the suggestion of a pitched battle between the boys and the boatmen frightened her dreadfully. Bess began to grow excited.

“Aren’t those men just mean? I wish I had something to hit them with–I do! I believe I’ll get out on the raft with my paddle.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Grace. “I think the boys are as nice to us as they can be.”

Suddenly, while the attention of all the others was held by the exciting situation on the raft, Frank Cameron cried out:

“Who’s this coming? Oh, girls! isn’t that Polly? Look, Wyn!”

Wyn almost overturned her canoe in her eagerness to back out of the group and whirl her canoe about that she might see. Down upon the scene was bearing one of the larger power boats from the other end of the lake.

“It’s Dr. Shelton’s Sunshine Boy!” cried Percy Havel.

“And that is Polly Jolly in the bow,” exclaimed Wyn. “Hurrah!”

She drove her paddle into the water and sent her canoe driving for the approaching motor boat.

“Polly! Polly!” she called, long before the boatman’s daughter could hear her.

But Polly recognized her just the same, and waved her hand; there was a gentleman pacing the deck, too, who came to lean on the rail and look at the flying canoe. Wyn next saw Mr. Jarley, in his working clothes, put his head out of the cabin that housed the motor.

“It’s Dr. Shelton,” Wyn thought. “Then he and Mr. Jarley have made it up. I’m so glad!”

But the motor boat was coming fast and Wyn drove her canoe as though she were racing. Swerving the craft quickly, the girl brought it very nicely into a berth beside the motor boat. Polly leaned down and steadied the canoe with the boat hook, and her friend hopped aboard. Then together they hoisted over the rail the almost swamped canoe.

“What’s all this? What’s all this?” demanded Dr. Shelton. “You girls are regular acrobats. Hullo! This is the young miss who won the canoe race and the swimming match for girls, the other day. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Polly, presenting Wyn proudly. “This is Miss Wynifred Mallory, my very dear friend.”

“The girl who thinks she has found our old motor boat–eh?” asked the burly doctor.

“I am sure she has found it, sir,” declared Polly. “And what are Eb and his chum, Billy Smith, trying to do there at the raft, Wyn?”

“They suspect something; but the boys have got the float right over the sunken boat and have promised to hold the bateau men off – ”

Just then Dr. Shelton turned quickly, picked up a megaphone and bawled through it to the bateau men, one of whom had leaped aboard the boys, raft.

“Hey, you! Get off that raft and keep off it, or I’ll put you both in jail at the Forge. Understand me?”

It was evident that the boatmen did understand the doctor, for the trespasser aboard the raft leaped back into the bateau without a blow being struck, although the boys were ready for him. The big sail of the craft was immediately raised and she had borne off to some distance when the Sunshine Boy was allowed to drift in close to the float.

“Now, boys,” said Dr. Shelton, genially, “I understand you have found my old Bright Eyes under water here and have been guarding it from all comers. Is that right?”

“No, Doctor,” returned Dave. “We fellows have had mighty little to do with it. It’s the girls – ”

“It’s Wyn!” cried Frank, “and nobody else.”

“Wyn did it all,” agreed Bess.

“But those men, poking around here, might have found it and laid claim to it, sir, if the boys had not come to the rescue,” declared the captain of the Go-Aheads, warmly.

“You seem to be a Mutual Admiration Society,” laughed the doctor. “However, if the boat is here and that express box intact, as Jarley says, I certainly owe somebody something handsome for finding it.”

“Oh, no, sir!” murmured Wyn, quickly, standing by his side. “You owe me nothing. Mr. Lavine has promised our club a present, and Polly and her father are going to be made very happy if it turns out all right. That is reward enough for us.”

“Humph! you feel that way about it; do you, Miss Mallory?” queried the doctor. “Just the same, if the Bright Eyes really is sunk here I must show my gratitude to somebody.”

“Then do something for Polly,” Wyn whispered. “Give her a chance to go to school–to Denton Academy with the rest of us girls. That would be fine! She wouldn’t let Mr. Lavine do that for her; but I know she’ll accept it from you, when her father has proved himself clear of suspicion.”

“Ha! John Jarley is a better man than I am,” grunted Dr. Shelton. “I had no business to talk to him the way I did regatta day. I’m free to admit I was wrong, whether we recover the Bright Eyes and the silver images, or not!”

And the question, Is it the Bright Eyes? was the principal subject of discussion among them all. The boys were just as eager as were the girls over the affair.

“If the sunken boat is all right–and the images,” said Dave Shepard, “you girls will be lucky enough to sail a motor boat of your own.”

“And we’d never own it if you boys hadn’t come forward as you did,” declared Wyn. “Isn’t that so, Bess?”

Bess had to admit the fact, much as she disliked praising boys.

“Oh, we’ll let you boys sail in our new boat once in a while,” she said.

“Goodness me! I should say yes!” exclaimed Frank, suddenly. “For we’ve got to have somebody teach us how to run a motor boat; haven’t we?”

CHAPTER XXVIII
A FRIEND IN NEED

It was early on the next day that Bessie received a message from her father for the whole club:

“Look for me in a few hours. Shall run up to see what Wyn has done as soon as I can get away. If it is all right, you shall have new boat this season.–Henry Lavine.”

A man brought it over from the Forge. The girls were delighted with the news. A guard had been set over the spot where the sunken boat lay and Dr. Shelton and Mr. Jarley were making arrangements to have a derrick barge towed up to Gannet Island, so that the old Bright Eyes could be brought to the surface quickly.

Naturally the Busters were too much interested in these proceedings to come over to Green Knoll Camp; and the girls had had so much excitement and exercise of late that they were inclined to take matters quietly for the time being.

Therefore, there was not a canoe on the lake when a fussy, smoky little motor boat, late in the afternoon, came into the lake from the Wintinooski and puffed out into deep water, evidently bound for either the Island or Green Knoll Camp.

The deep cove, at the head of which the little red and yellow cottage of the Jarleys was set, was like a big bay in the contour of the lake shore. It was out here in this deep water that Wyn Mallory and Bess Lavine had been swamped by the squall. From the docks at the Forge to the point east of Green Knoll, where the girls’ camp was situated, was all of eight miles. When this little motor boat had sputtered along until she was about half way between those two points, she suddenly stopped.

The girls had been lazily on the lookout for Mr. Lavine’s appearance and earlier in the day had kept the camp spyglass busy. Now Frank suddenly caught it up again and focused it almost at once on the stalled motor boat.

“Oh! what’s that?” was her excited demand. “Girls! there’s a boat we missed before.”

“Where?” drawled Grace, lazily.

“It isn’t father; is it?” demanded Bess.

“How do I know? It’s a power boat – Goodness, what’s that?”

She jumped so that Wyn came to her side quickly. “Let me see, Frank,” she begged.

“There’s–there’s a fire!” gasped Frankie.

The girls came running at her cry. Even Mrs. Havel left her seat and stepped out of the shade of the beech tree to scan the water under her hand.

“I see smoke!” cried Percy.

“Dear me! is the boat really afire?” demanded Mina Everett.

“Of course, it can’t be father,” declared Bess. “He knows how to take care of a motor boat.”

Through the glass Wyn, who now had it, saw the flames leaping from under the hood of the boat, while a dense plume of smoke began to reel away on the breeze that was blowing.

“It is afire!” she gasped “Oh! it is! What can we do?”

“We could never reach it in our canoes before the boat burns to the water’s edge,” cried Frankie.

They could see two figures on the doomed boat. Through the glass Wyn could see them so plainly that she knew one to be a waterman, while the other was much better dressed. Indeed, she feared that she recognized the figure of this second man.

“Let me have the glass, Wyn,” said Bessie, eagerly.

But Wyn, for once, was disobliging. “You can’t see anything–much,” she said. “Come on, Bess! let’s try and paddle out to them.”

“And have them swamp our canoes if they tried to climb in,” said Miss Lavine. “No, thanks!”

“Come on!” cried Frank, joining in. “We ought to try and help.”

“What’s the use?” drawled Bessie, walking away. “And you’re mean not to let me have the glass, Wyn.”

“Oh, come on and take it!” gasped Wyn.

“Don’t want it now,” snapped Bess, who took offense rather easily at times. “You can keep the old thing.”

Wyn sighed with relief. Then she whirled quickly and ran down to the beach, with Frank right at her heels. They were the only two girls who launched their canoes. Wyn had brought the glass with her.

“Now I know Bess won’t see him,” she exclaimed, almost in a whisper.

“What’s that?” demanded Frankie, who overheard. “What do you mean, Wyn?”

“I believe that is Mr. Lavine out there,” said the captain of the Go-Aheads. “Oh, Frank! paddle hard!”

And it was Mr. Lavine. He had hired this little gasoline boat, with its owner to run it, at Denton, and had paid the owner an extra five-dollar bill to force the boat to its very highest speed (and that wasn’t much) all the way up the Wintinooski. Mr. Lavine was in a hurry; he was in too much of a hurry, as it proved.

Somewhere off Meade’s Forge he began to smell the gasoline all too strongly. There was a leak somewhere; but the boat kept on.

Finally even the reckless driver grew frightened and shut off the spark.

“There’s a leak, boss,” he drawled. “Sure as aigs is aigs!”

Mr. Lavine tore up one of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. A man with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilge in the cockpit.

“Leak!” he exclaimed, wrathfully. “I should say you had been using the boat’s bottom for a gasoline tank. Why! we might have been blown up a dozen times.”

“I expect the leak’s in the feed pipe,” confessed the boatman. “But I thought I’d got her fixed las’ week.”

“You’ve got us fixed,” snapped Mr. Lavine. “’Way out here in the middle of Lake Honotonka, too–and I in a hurry.”

“Wal,” said the man, “I’ll putty up the leak and you see if you kin swab out the boat. I wouldn’t dare try and ignite her again with so much gasoline around.”

“I–should–say–not!” gasped the gentleman, and removed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and his trousers, and set to work.

They both labored like beavers for half an hour and then the boatman did the very silliest thing one can imagine. He had worked hard and, being a man addicted to tobacco, he felt the need of a smoke.

He pulled out his pipe, filled it, unnoticed by Mr. Lavine, who was still trying to swab out the last of the bilge and gasoline, and scratched a match. He was directly in front of the hood of the boat when he did it. The next moment there was a flash, a roar, and the man was flung the length of the boat, against Mr. Lavine in the stern, and the two almost went overboard.

The foolish smoker lost his mustache, eyebrows, and lashes, and a lot of his front hair. He was scorched quite severely, too; but the peril which menaced them with the front of the boat in flames drove the thought of his burns from the fellow’s mind.

“And I can’t swim a stroke, boss!” he cried.

“You have nothing on me there,” declared Mr. Lavine. “I have never been able to master more than the first few motions in the art of swimming.”

But the flames were springing higher and they had nothing with which to throw water on the fire. The man had not even a bailing tin in his moribund old craft. Mr. Lavine had been using a swab and was covered with grease and dirty water.

This became a small thing, however–and that within a very few minutes. The boat was doomed and both knew it.

Mr. Lavine tried to tear up more of the grating under foot so as to make something that would float and upon which they might bear themselves up in the water. But the boards were too thin.

Then he tried to unship the rudder (the singed boatman was no use at all in this emergency) and so make use of that as a float. But the bolts were rusted and the boat had begun to swing around so that the fire blew right into the stern.

They both had to leap overboard.

It was a serious situation indeed. By Mr. Lavine’s advice they paddled toward the bow, one on either side of the boat, for the flames were rushing aft.

The bow was a mere shell, however. The flames had already almost consumed it, and soon the fire fairly ate through the bows at the water level. The water rushed in and so sank the boat by the head.

Not that the boat went straight down. The stern rose in the water and the two men, in their desperate strait, gazed at the flames above their heads.

Had it been night the fire would have been like a great torch in the middle of the lake–and it would have brought help from all directions. As it was, the black smoke first thrown off, and then the steam, attracted more than the girls of Green Knoll Camp to the scene.

At the landing Mr. Jarley was splicing some heavy rope which he expected to use the next day when the sunken Bright Eyes would be actually raised. Polly saw the smoke first from the cottage and ran out to tell him.

“One of those motor boats is afire, Father!” she cried. Instantly the boatman set about going to the rescue. It was a fair day, but there was a good breeze blowing. Jarley took the Coquette.

He had no idea to whom he was playing the friend in need when he sailed the catboat down upon the scene of the disaster. It was a chance to help two fellow beings and the boatman cared not who they were.

Of course the sailing craft beat out the two frantically paddling girls from Green Knoll Camp. Yet it was still a long way from the spot when the last of the burning boat seemed to sink completely and the flames were snuffed out by the waters of the lake.