CHAPTER XIV
BERT’S WATER MILL
Nan Bobbsey was sure of one thing—and this was that she was going to hold with all her might to that rope attached to the hay fork. To let go, now that the fork was out of the barn and over the open yard, would mean a bad fall. So the girl clenched her fingers around the rope and set her teeth. It was a little “scary,” she said afterward, to look down to the earth, though, as a matter of fact, it was not more than twenty feet below her. But that is quite a fall to take.
However, Nan’s danger was soon over. The horse backed so that the laden fork and the girl came back over the wagon load of hay, and then Zeek cried:
“You can let go now! You’re all right.”
Nan could see this for herself. She saw that her feet dangled a little way above the big pile of hay on the wagon.
She opened her fingers and dropped into the mass of sweet-smelling grass with a sigh of relief.
“She’s all right—not hurt a bit!” reported Zeek, who began climbing up to Nan as soon as he saw that she was safe. “What made you catch hold of the fork in the barn?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the little girl, who was almost crying. “I shouldn’t have done it, I know. But I saw that the hay wasn’t going to drop and I had seen you pull the short rope, so I thought I could do it. But it didn’t work, and before I could let go I found myself carried out of the barn.”
“The hay fork prongs got jammed,” explained the man in charge of unloading the wagon. “First time I’ve known that to happen.”
Bert, who had been out in a workshop which Mr. Watson had in one of the barns, saw from Nan’s face that something had happened when he noticed her walking out of the barnyard, and when he learned what it was he exclaimed:
“Jimminy, it’s a good thing you held fast, Nan!”
“Yes, I knew I must do that,” she said. “But what’s that, Bert?” she asked, for she saw that her brother had been “making something,” as he called it.
“It’s going to be a water mill if I ever get it finished,” he replied.
“You mean a mill to turn by water?” asked Nan.
“Yes, it’s a sort of water wheel,” explained Bert. “But maybe I can make it so it will turn a fan, or something like that. I’ll put the wheel, with paddles on, down in the brook where there’s a little waterfall,” he went on. “Then I can have a belt of cord that goes around a pulley wheel on the paddles. And up at the house I can make a fan with another pulley on it. And when the water turns the paddle and pulley it will also turn the fan and we’ll get a breeze on a hot day.”
“Oh, that’ll be fine!” cried Nan.
“It will if it works,” replied Bert, more practically. “I made one last year and it didn’t work. Anyhow, this one is going to be better. I’m going to try the paddle wheels now—I’ve got that much done. Want to come and see it work?”
“Yes,” answered Nan eagerly. “I do hope it works, Bert!”
“So do I,” he said.
The brook ran down at the lower end of the kitchen garden of Cloverbank. Along the bank of this stream the Bobbsey twins loved to play. The water was not deep enough, except in a few places, to make it venturesome play, and the children had been told to keep away from these spots.
“But we have to go to one of the deep spots now, to make this paddle wheel work and try my water mill,” Bert said. “The only place where the water tumbles over the rocks enough to turn the paddle is where it’s deep. But we’ll be careful.”
“Yes, we’ll be careful,” agreed Nan. “And Mother won’t mind our going there if it’s to try your mill. For she likes to be cool, and maybe she will like your fan, Bert.”
“Maybe,” he assented. “But I haven’t got the fan part done yet—just the water mill paddle part.”
As Bert and Nan made their way to a little waterfall in the brook, they heard the shouts of Flossie and Freddie, who had gone some time before to sail toy boats.
“They’re having a good time,” remarked Nan.
“It sounds so,” agreed her brother.
But just then there was a shrill scream from Flossie, and Freddie’s voice could be heard shouting:
“Oh, there he goes! Now he’s in!”
Bert and Nan looked at each other with alarm. They heard a splashing of water.
“One of them has fallen in!” gasped Nan.
Guided by the shouts of the smaller twins, the older ones soon reached the place where Freddie and Flossie had been playing. As they neared the spot they heard laughter mingled with the shouts.
“I don’t believe either one of them fell in,” said Bert, as he slowed up a bit to wait for his sister.
“It sounded so,” she said. “And we heard them say so.”
Wondering what had happened to cause the splashing, the two hurried on and, pushing their way through the bushes that fringed the edge of the brook, Bert and Nan saw their brother and sister standing on the shore. But there was something in the water that excited them, for they wererunning up and down poking long sticks into the brook.
“What’s the matter?” called Nan.
“Did anybody fall in?” Bert wanted to know.
“Just an old big bullfrog!” was Freddie’s unexpected answer.
“Oh, he was such a big, fat frog!” added Flossie. “Did you hear the splash he made?”
“I should say we did!” replied Nan. “We thought maybe it was one of you.”
“No,” Freddie said. “But I almost fell in trying to stop the frog from getting away.”
“Did you catch him? What happened?” asked Bert.
“We almost caught him,” replied Freddie. “We were sailing our boats, and Flossie saw the frog. He was up on the bank, asleep in the sun.”
“And Freddie said for us to get between him and the water and drive him farther up on the bank and then maybe we could catch him,” added Flossie. “So we tried to creep up so he wouldn’t hear us. But he has good ears, I guess, for he woke up and began to hop toward the water.”
“Frogs always do that,” explained Freddie,as if he knew all about such creatures. “We tried to chase him back with sticks, but he just kept on jumping this way and that way, trying to get into the brook again, and then—then——” Freddie had to stop and laugh at the memory of what had happened, so Flossie finished the story by saying:
“The big frog hopped close to Freddie and Freddie thought he could grab him and he stooped over, Freddie did, and the frog hopped right between his legs—I mean between Freddie’s legs—and splashed into the brook. That’s how he got away.”
“Yes,” added Freddie, still laughing, “that’s how he got away. And I fell over, ’cause I made such a quick grab for him. But I didn’t hurt myself,” he added, “and I didn’t get much muddy—only a little.”
“I should say it was more than a little,” laughed Nan. “But I guess it won’t matter on your old clothes.”
“No, it won’t matter any,” decided Freddie.
“After the frog got in,” went on Flossie, “we tried to poke him out with long sticks, but he won’t poke at all.”
“I should think he wouldn’t,” chuckledBert. “He’s glad to get away from you two. I guess he’s deep down in the mud now, laughing at you.”
“Well, I almost had him,” was what Freddie said. Then he saw the pieces of wood Bert had and asked: “What’s that—a water wheel?”
“Sort of,” Bert admitted. “I’m going to try to make a water mill to run a wooden fan. I’m going down to the waterfall to try it.”
“Oh, may we come?” begged Flossie.
“You may if you will promise to sit down on the bank and not come near the edge, for it’s deep there!” insisted Bert.
“We’ll sit down all the while. Won’t we, Flossie?” asked her small brother, and she nodded her head vigorously in answer.
“Well, I guess it will be all right to take them,” decided Nan.
A little later the four Bobbsey twins were at the place where the brook splashed noisily over a ledge of rocks, falling a distance of about two feet. It made a fine place to set up a water wheel, and Bert was soon fastening his in place so the falling stream would turn the paddles. If these worked he intended connecting them by means of a string belt andpulleys to a fan set up some distance away. But he had yet to build the fan.
Bert drove into the earth bank on one side of the little waterfall some pieces of wood to which he intended fastening his water mill paddle. He had finished this and was about to set up the wooden wheel when Flossie gave a startled cry.
Though he knew he had left his little sister sitting safely on the bank some distance away from the water, Bert felt that she might have gone too near the edge and might be sliding in.
“Look out!” he cried, dropping the wheel and turning around. Before he knew it, he set one foot on a slippery place on the bank. The next instant Bert felt himself sliding down toward the deep pool below the falls.
“Here I go!” he shouted wildly.
Bert could swim. Still, he did not want to fall in if he could help it, and he clutched desperately at the grassy bank.