Kitabı oku: «Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIII
A SERIOUS ADVENTURE
Wyn Mallory was a pretty cool-headed girl; nor was this the first time she had been in an accident of this nature.
Naturally, in learning to handle the light cedar craft as expertly as they did, the members of the Go-Ahead Club had much experience. While the weather was good the girls plied their paddles up and down the Wintinooski, but seldom was the river as rough as this open lake in which Wyn and Bessie Lavine had been so unexpectedly overturned.
“Oh! am I not the unluckiest girl that–that ever happened?” wailed Bess, when she came up puffing.
“N-o-no more than I, Bess,” stammered Wyn.
“Get your canoe, Wyn!” cried Bess.
“Oh, yes; but we can’t turn them over in this sea. Oh! isn’t that horrid!” as another miniature wave slapped the captain of the club in the face and rolled her companion completely over.
Bess lost her grip on her canoe. The latter floated beyond her reach while Wyn was striving to get her friend to the surface again.
“Why! we’re going to be drowned!” shrieked Bess, suddenly horror-stricken.
“Don’t you dare lose your nerve,” commanded Wynifred. “If we lose courage we certainly will be lost.”
“Oh, but, Wyn – ”
“Oh, but, Bess! Don’t you dare. Here! get hold of the keel of my canoe.”
“But it won’t bear us both up,” groaned Bessie Lavine.
“It’s got to,” declared Wyn. “Have courage; don’t be afraid.”
“You needn’t try to tell me you’re not afraid yourself, Wyn Mallory!” chattered her friend.
“Of course I am, dear; but I mean, don’t lose your head because you are afraid,” said Wyn. “Come, now! Paddle with one hand and cling to the keel with the other. I’ll do the same.”
“Oh, dear, me! if we were only not so far from the shore,” groaned Bess.
“Somebody may see us and come to our help,” said Wyn, with more confidence in her tone than she really felt.
“The canoes couldn’t live in this gale.”
“It’s only a squall.”
“That’s all very well; but they wouldn’t dare to start out for us from Green Knoll.”
“But the boys – ”
“Their camp isn’t in sight of this place, Wyn,” moaned Bess. “Oh! we will be drowned.”
But Wyn had another hope. She remembered, just before the overturn, that she had caught a glimpse of the red and yellow cottage behind Jarley’s Landing.
“Oh, Bess!” she gasped. “Perhaps Mr. Jarley will see us. Perhaps Polly – ”
Another slapping wave came and rolled them and the canoe over. The frail craft came keel up, level full of water. The least weight upon it now would send it to the bottom of the lake.
“Oh, oh!” shrieked Bess, when she found her voice. “What shall we do now?”
They could both swim; but the lake was rough. The sudden and spiteful squall had torn up the surface for many yards around. Yet, as they rose upon one of the waves, they saw the sun shining boldly in the westward. The squall was scurrying away.
“Come on! we’ve got to swim,” urged Wyn.
“That’s so hard,” wailed Bess, but striking out, nevertheless, in the way she had been so well taught by the instructor in Denton. All these girls had been trained in the public school baths.
“There’s the other canoe,” said Wyn, hopefully.
“But we–we don’t want to go that way,” gasped Bess. “It’s away from land.”
Now Wyn knew very well that they had scarcely a chance of swimming to the distant shore. In ordinarily calm weather–yes; but in this rough sea, and hampered as they were by their bloomers and other clothing–no.
The two girls swam close together, but Wyn dared not offer her comrade help. She wanted to, but she feared that if she did so Bess would break down and become helpless entirely; and Wyn hoped they would get much farther inshore before that happened.
The squall had quite gone over and the sun began to shine. It seemed a cruel thing–to drown out there in the sunlight. And yet the buffeting little waves, kicked up by the wind-flaw, were so hard to swim through.
Had the waves been of a really serious size the struggle would have been less difficult for the two girls. They could have ridden over the big waves and managed to keep their heads above water; but every once in a while a cross wavelet would slap their faces, and every time one did so Bess managed to get a mouthful of water.
“Oh! what will papa do?” moaned Bess.
And Wyn knew what the poor girl meant. She was her father’s close companion and chum. The other girls in the Lavine family were smaller and their mother was devoted to them; but Bess and Mr. Lavine were pals all the time.
Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree.
Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore.
Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her–bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away.
Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril.
And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them?
In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue.
CHAPTER XIV
THE REPULSE
As the squall threatened in the northwest, it had been observed by many on the shores of Lake Honotonka–and many on the lake itself, as well. Sailing craft had run for havens. The lake could be nasty at times and there might be more than a capful of wind in the black cloud that spread so quickly over a sky that had–an hour before–been of azure.
Had the two girls from Green Knoll Camp been observed by the watermen as they embarked in their canoes at Meade’s Forge, they might have been warned against venturing far from the shore in those cockleshells. But Wynifred and Bessie had not been observed, so were not warned.
The squall had come down so quickly that they were not much to be blamed. It had startled other people on the lake–and those much more used to its vagaries.
In a cove on the north shore a small cat-rigged boat had been drifting since noon-time, its single occupant having found the fishing very good. This fisher was the boatman’s daughter, Polly Jarley.
She had now a splendid catch and she knew that, if the wind held true, a sharp run to the westward would bring her to Braisely Park. At some one of the private landings there her fish would be welcomed–she could get more for them than she could at the Forge, which was nearer.
But the squall gathered so fast that she had to put aside the thought of the run down the lake. The wind would switch about, too, after the squall. That was a foregone conclusion.
She waited until the blow was past and then saw that it would be quite impossible to make the park that afternoon and return to the landing in time for tea. And if she was later her father would be worried.
Mr. Jarley did not like to have his girl go out this way and work all day; but there seemed nothing else to be done this summer. They owed so much at the stores at the Forge; and the principal and interest on the chattel mortgage must be found before New Year or they would lose their fleet of boats. And as yet few campers had come to the lake who wished to hire Mr. Jarley’s boats.
So by fishing (and none of the old fellows who had fished Honotonka for years was wiser about the good fishing places than Polly) the girl added from one to two dollars every favorable day to the family income. Sometimes she was off by light in one boat or another; but she did not often come to this northern side of the lake. This cove was at least ten miles from home.
As the last breath of the squall passed, the wind veered as she had expected, and Polly, having reeled in her two lines and unjointed the bamboo poles, stowed everything neatly, raised the anchor, or kedge, and set a hand’s breadth of the big sail.
The canvas filled, and with the sheet in one hand and the other on the arm of the tiller, the girl steered the catboat out of the cove and into the rumpus kicked up by the passing squall.
The girls of the Go-Ahead Club would surely have been frightened had they been aboard the little Coquette, as the catboat was named. She rocked and jumped, and the spume flew over her gunwale in an intermittent shower. But in this sea, which so easily swamped the canoes, the catboat was as safe as a house.
Polly was used to much rougher weather than this. In the summer Lake Honotonka was on its best behavior. At other seasons the tempests tore down from the north and west and sometimes made the lake so terrible in appearance that even the hardiest bateau man in those parts would not risk himself in a boat.
Polly knew, however, that the worst of the squall was over. The lake would gradually subside to its former calm. And the change in the wind was favorable now to a quick passage either to the Forge or to her father’s tiny landing.
“Can’t get any fancy price for the fish at Meade’s,” thought Polly. “I have a good mind to put them in our trap and try again for Braisely Park to-morrow morning.”
As she spoke she was running outside the horns of the cove. She could get a clear sweep now of the lake–as far as it could be viewed from the low eminence of the boat–and she rose up to see it.
“Nobody out but I,” she thought. “Ah! all those folk at the end of the lake ran in when the squall appeared. And the girls and boys over yonder – ”
She was peering now across the lake ahead of the Coquette’s nose, toward the little island where was Cave-in-the-Wood Camp, and at Green Knoll Camp, where the girls from Denton were staying.
Her face fell as she focused her gaze upon the bit of high, green bank on which the sun was now shining again so brilliantly. She remembered how badly she had been treated by Bess Lavine only that morning.
“I can’t go over there any more,” she muttered. “That girl will never forget–or let the others forget–that father has been accused of being a thief. It’s a shame! A hateful shame! And we’re every bit as good as she is – ”
Her gaze dropped to the tumbling wavelets between her and the distant green hillock. She was about to resume her seat and catch the tiller, which she had held steady with her knee.
But now her breath left her and for a moment she stood motionless–only giving to the plunge and jump of the Coquette through the choppy waves.
“Ah!” she exclaimed again, after a little intake of breath.
There were two round objects rising and falling in the rough water–and far ahead. They looked like cocoanuts.
But a little to one side was a long, black something–a stick of timber drifting on the current? No! An overturned boat.
There was no mistaking the cocoanut-like objects. They were human heads. Two capsized people were struggling in the lake.
Polly, in thirty seconds, was keenly alive to what she must do. There was no time lost in bewailing the catastrophe, or wondering about the identity of the castaways.
Who or whatever they were they must be saved. There was not another boat on the lake. And the swimmers were too far from land to be observed under any conditions.
The wind was strong and steady. The wavelets were still choppy, but Polly Jarley never thought of a wetting.
Up went the sail–up, up, up until the unhelmed catboat lay over almost on beam ends. The girl took a sailor’s turn of the sheet around the cleat and then swung all her weight against the tiller, to bring the boat’s head up. She held the sheet ready to let go if a warning creak from the mast should sound, or the boat refuse to respond.
But in half a minute the Coquette righted. It had been a perilous chance–she might have torn the stick out. The immediate peril was past, however. The great canvas filled. Away shot the sprightly Coquette with the wind–a bone in her teeth.
Now and then she dipped and the spume flew high, drenching Polly. The boatman’s daughter was not dressed for this rough work, for she was hatless and wore merely a blouse and old skirt for outside garments. She had pulled off her shoes and stockings while she fished and had not had time to put them on again.
So the flying spray wet her through. She dodged occasionally to protect her eyes from the spoondrift which slatted so sharply across the deck and into the cockpit. The water gathered in the bottom of the old boat and was soon ankle-deep.
But Polly knew the craft was tight and that this water could be bailed out again when she had time. Just now her mind and gaze were fixed mainly upon the round, bobbing objects ahead.
For some minutes, although the catboat was traveling about as fast as Polly had ever sailed, save in a power boat, the girl could not be sure whether the swamped voyagers were girls or boys. It might be two of the Busters, from Gannet Island, for all she knew. She had made up her mind that the victims of the accident were from one camp or the other. There were no other campers as yet on the shore at this end of the lake.
Then Polly realized that the heads belonged to girls. She could see the braids floating out behind. And she knew that they were fighting for their lives.
They swam near together; once one of them raised up breast high in the water, as though looking shoreward. But neither turned back to see if help was coming from behind.
With both hands engaged with sheet and tiller Polly could not make a megaphone to carry her voice; but several times she shouted as loud as she could:
“Ahoy! Hold on! I’m coming!”
Her voice seemed flung right back into her face–drowned by the slatting spray. How viciously that water stung!
The Coquette was traveling at racing speed; but would she be in time?
How long could those two girls bear up in the choppy sea?
One of the heads suddenly disappeared. Polly shrieked; but she could do nothing to aid.
The spray filled her eyes again and, when she had shaken them free, Polly saw that the other swimmer–the stronger one–had gotten her comrade above the surface once more.
Indeed, this one was swimming on her back and holding up the girl who had gone under. How brave she was!
The sun shone clear upon the two in the water and Polly recognized Wynifred Mallory.
“Wyn! Wynnie! Hold to her! Hold up!” cried the boatman’s daughter. “I’ll help you!”
But she was still so far away–it seemed as though the catboat never would come within hailing distance. But before she turned over in the water to swim with Bessie’s hand upon her shoulder, the captain of the Go-Ahead Club beheld the catboat rushing down upon them.
She could only wave a beckoning hand. She could not cry out. Wyn was well-nigh breathless, and Bessie’s only hope was in her. The captain of the canoe club had to save her strength.
Down swooped the catboat. Polly was shouting madly; but not for an instant did she lose control of the boat or ignore the work she had in hand. She wanted to encourage Wyn and the other; but she was taking no chances.
Suddenly she let the sheet run and loosed the halliards. The canvas fluttered down on the deck with a rustle and crash. The catboat sprang to even keel, but shot on under the momentum it had gained in swooping down upon the swamped girls.
“Wyn! hold hard! I’ve got you!”
But it was the other girl Polly grasped. Wyn had turned, thrust the half-drowned Bessie before her, and Polly, leaning over the gunwale of the tossing boat, seized her by the shoulders.
In a moment she heaved up, struggled, dragged the other girl forward, and together rescuer and rescued tumbled flat into the cockpit of the Coquette.
Polly shouted again:
“Wyn! Wyn! I’ll come back for you – ”
“Give me a hand!” cried Wyn, hanging to the rudder. “Polly! you old darling! If you hadn’t got here when you did – ”
Polly left Bess to her own resources and rushed to the stern. She helped Wyn clamber into the boat. Then she hoisted the sail again, and got way upon the boat. She raised the canvas only a little, for she had risked all the weight she dared upon the mast before.
“Are you all right, Bess?” cried Wyn.
“I–I’m alive. But, oh! I’m so–so sick,” gasped Miss Lavine.
“Brace up, Bess! We’re all right now. Polly has saved us.”
“Polly?” cried Bess, sitting up, the better to see the boatman’s daughter as the latter sat again at the helm. “Oh, Polly!”
“You’d better both lie down till we get to the camp. I’ll take you right there,” said the other girl, briefly.
“We’d have been–been drowned, Wyn!” gasped Bess.
“I guess we would. We are still a long way from shore.”
“And Polly saved us? All alone? How wonderful!”
But Polly’s face was stern. She scarcely spoke to the two Denton girls as the Coquette swept across the lake. Wyn told her just how it all happened and the condition of the two canoes when they lost sight of them.
“I saw one; maybe the other can be found,” Polly said. “I’ll speak to father and, if the moon comes up clear bye and bye, we’ll run out and see if we can recover them.”
But for Bess she had no word, or look, and when the other put out her hand timidly and tried to thank her, as they neared the shore, Polly only said:
“That’s all right. We’re used to helping people who get overturned. It really is nothing.”
She would not see Bessie’s hand. The latter felt the repulse and Wyn, who watched them both anxiously, dared not say a word.
CHAPTER XV
TROUBLE “BRUIN”
The other girls and Mrs. Havel were all down on the beach to meet the catboat and her passengers. To see Wyn and Bessie returning across the lake in the sailboat, instead of the canoes, forewarned the Go-Aheads that an accident had happened.
But although the girls were wet and bedraggled, the captain of the club made light of the affair.
“Where are your canoes?”
“What’s happened?”
“Who is it with you?”
“What under the sun did you do–go overboard?”
Wyn answered all questions in a single sentence:
“We were capsized and lost the letters and things; but Polly picked us up and brought us home.”
Then, amid the excited cries and congratulations, her voice rose again:
“Isn’t she brave? What do you think of my Polly Jolly now? Can you blame me for being proud of her?”
“I tell you wh–what she is!” gasped Bessie. “She’s the bravest and smartest girl I ever heard of.”
“Good for you, Bess!” shouted Frank Cameron, helping the castaways ashore. “You’re coming to your senses.”
“And–and I’m sorry,” blurted out Bess, “that I ever treated her so – ”
Polly shoved off the catboat and proceeded to get under way again.
“Oh, do come ashore, Polly!” begged Grace.
“I want to hug you, Miss Jarley!” cried Percy.
“What? All wet as I am now?” returned the boatman’s daughter, laughing–although the laugh was not a pleasant one. “You make too much of this matter. We’re used to oversets on the lake. It is nothing.”
“You do not call saving two girls’ lives nothing, my dear–surely?” proposed Mrs. Havel.
“If I saved them, I am very, very glad of it,” returned Polly, gravely. “Anybody would be glad of that, of course, But you are making too much of it – ”
“My father will not think so!” exclaimed the almost hysterical Bess. “When he learns of this he will not be able to do enough for you – ”
“Your father can do nothing for me, Bessie Lavine!” cried the boatman’s daughter, with sharpness.
“Oh, Polly!” said Wyn, holding out her arms to her.
“He’ll–he’ll want to,” pursued Bess, eagerly. “Oh! he will! He’d do anything for you now – ”
“There’s only one thing Henry Lavine can do for me,” cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. “He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him–be decent to him. I don’t want anything else–and I don’t want that as pay for fishing you out of the lake!”
She had got the sail up again and now the breeze filled it. The Coquette laid over and slipped away from the shore. Her last words had silenced all the girls–even Mrs. Havel herself.
Bess burst into tears. She was quite broken down, and Wyn went off with her to the tent, her arm over her shoulder, and whispering to her comfortingly.
“I don’t care. Polly’s served her right,” declared Frank Cameron.
“I do not know that Polly can be blamed,” Mrs. Havel observed. “But–but I wish she was more forgiving. It is not for herself that she speaks, however. It is for her father.”
“And I’ll wager he’s just as nice a man as ever was,” declared Frank. “I’m going to ask my father if he will not do something for Mr. Jarley.”
“Do so, Frances,” advised the chaperon. “I think you will do well.”
The accident cast a cloud over Green Knoll Camp for the evening. The girls who had been swamped went to bed and were dosed with hot drinks brewed over the campfire by Mrs. Havel. And when the boys came over in their fleet for an evening sing and frolic, they were sent back again to the island almost at once.
The boys did not take altogether kindly to this rebuff, and Tubby was heard to say:
“Isn’t that just like girls? Because they got a little wet they must go to bed and take catnip tea, or something, and be quiet. Their nerves are all unstrung! Gee! wouldn’t that make your ears buzz?”
“Aw, you’re a doubting Thomas and always will be, Tub,” said Ferd Roberts. “You never believe what you’re told. You’re as suspicious as the farmer who went to town and bought a pair of shoes, and when he’d paid for ’em the clerk says:
“‘Now, sir, can’t I sell you a pair of shoe trees?’
“‘Don’t you get fresh with me, sonny,’ says the farmer, his whiskers bristling. ‘I don’t believe shoes kin be raised on trees any more ’n I believe rubbers grow on rubber trees, or oysters on oyster plants, b’gosh!’”
“Well,” snarled the fat youth, as the other Busters laughed, “the girls are always making excuses. You can never tell what a girl means, anyway–not by what she says.”
“You know speech was given us to hide our thoughts,” laughed Dave.
“Say! I’ll get square just the same–paddlin’ clear over here for nothing. Humph! I know that Hedges girl is afraid there’s bears in the woods? Say, fellers! I’ve got it! Yes, I’ve got it!”
When Tubby spoke in this way, and his eyes snapped and he began to look eager, his mates knew that the fat youth’s gigantic mind was working overtime, and they immediately gathered around and stopped paddling.
As Dave said, chuckling, a little later, “trouble was bruin!”
In the morning the girls found the two lost canoes on the shore below the camp. Polly and her father had evidently gone out in the evening, after the moon rose, and recovered them. Neither, of course, was damaged.
“And we must do something nice to pay them for it!” cried Grace.
Bessie was still deeply concerned over Polly’s attitude.
“I am going to write father at once, and tell him all about it,” she said. “And I am sorry for the way I treated Polly at first. Do you suppose she will ever forgive me, Wyn?”
Just as Wyn had once said in discussing Bessie’s character: when the latter realized that she was in the wrong, or had been unfair to anyone, she was never afraid to admit her fault and try to “make it up.” But this seemed to be a case where it was very difficult for Bessie to “square herself.”
The boatman’s daughter had shown herself unwilling to be friendly with Bess. Nor was Polly, perhaps, to be blamed.
However, on this particular morning the girls of Green Knoll Camp had something besides Bessie’s disturbance of mind and Polly Jarley’s attitude to think about.
And this “something” came upon them with a suddenness that set the entire camp in an uproar. Grace, the dilatory, was picking berries before breakfast along the edge of the clearing, and popping them into her mouth as fast as she could find ripe ones.
“Come here and help, Grace!” called Percy from the tent where she was shaking out the heavy blankets. “I’m not going to do all my work and yours, too.”
“You come and help me. It’s more fun,” returned Grace, laughing at her.
Then the lazy girl turned and reached for a particularly juicy blackberry, in the clump ahead of her. Percy saw her struck motionless for a second, or two; then the big girl fairly fell backward, rolled over, picked herself up, and raced back to the tents, her mouth wide open and her hair streaming in the wind.
“What is the matter?” gasped Percy.
“Oh, Grace! you look dreadful! Tell us, what has happened!” begged Bessie, as the big girl sank down by the entrance to the tent, her limbs too weak to bear her farther.
“What has scared you so, Grace?” demanded Wyn, running up.
Grace’s eyes rolled, she shut and opened her mouth again several times. Then she was only able to gasp out the one word:
“Bear!”
The other girls came crowding around. “What do you mean, Grace?” “Stop trying to scare us, Grace!” “She’s fooling,” were some of the cries they uttered.
But Wyn saw that her friend was really frightened; she was not “putting it on.”
“You don’t mean that it was a real bear?” cried Frank Cameron.
“A bear, I tell you!” moaned Grace, rocking herself to and fro. “I told you they were here in the woods.”
“Oh, dear me!” screamed Mina. “What shall we do?”
“You didn’t see it, Grace?” demanded Wyn, sternly. “You only heard it.”
“I saw it, I tell you!”
“Not really?”
“Do–do you think I don’t know a bear when I see one?” demanded Grace. “He–he’ll be right after us – ”
“No. If it was a real, wild bear he would be just as scared at seeing you as you would be at seeing him,” remarked the decidedly sensible captain.
“He–he couldn’t be as scared as I am,” moaned Grace, with considerable emphasis.
“I don’t believe there’s a bear within miles and miles of here!” declared Frank.
“Well! I declare I hope there isn’t,” cried Bess.
“I’ll look,” offered Wyn. “Grace just thought she saw something.”
“A great, black and brown hairy beast!” moaned Grace. “He stood right up on his hind legs and stretched out his arms to me – ”
“Enamored of all your young charms,” giggled Frank.
“It’s no joke!” gasped the frightened one.
“It might be a bear, you know,” quavered Mina.
The breakfast was being neglected. Mrs. Havel was down at the edge of the lake washing out some bits of lace. She had not heard the rumpus.
“I’m going to see,” announced Frank, and ran back over the course Grace had come.
She reached the berry bushes. She parted them and peered through. She began to enter the jungle, indeed, in search of bruin.
And then the girls all heard a sort of snuffling growl–just the sort of a noise they thought a bear must make. Frank jumped out of those bushes as though they had become suddenly afire!
“Wha–what did I tell you?” screamed Grace.
“He’s there!” groaned Mina.
Then suddenly a dark object appeared among the saplings and underbrush.
“Look out, Frank! Run!” cried the other girls, in chorus; but Miss Cameron needed no urging; she ran with all her might!
