CHAPTER XXIION THE LAKE
Mrs. Martinsat up in her berth and listened. She could hear no sound except the gentle lapping of the water against the sides of thePine Tree. There had been no motion when she went to sleep, for the river did not flow swiftly at this point. But something had awakened Janet.
“Don’t you feel it, Mother?” asked the little Curlytop girl. “Don’t you feel us moving?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” Mrs. Martin said, after sitting still for a few seconds. “We are certainly moving. I’ll call your father.”
“Do you think anything is going to happen?” asked Janet, greatly excited by this time.
“No, I think we are dragging our anchor—that’s all,” answered her mother. “It must be seen to.”
Putting on her dressing gown and slippers, Mrs. Martin went to the other cabin where her husband was sleeping with Ted. A touch on his shoulder awakened Mr. Martin.
“What is it?” he asked sleepily. “Have we reached Pittsburgh yet, porter?”
“You aren’t in a sleeping car, traveling to Pittsburgh,” laughed his wife. In his earlier days Mr. Martin had been a traveling salesman and covered many thousands of miles in sleeping cars.
“What is it, then?” he asked, sitting up. By the gleam of the little light he saw his wife standing near his berth.
“The boat is moving,” she told him.
“Moving?”
“Yes. Don’t you feel it? Janet felt it first and called me. I think we are dragging our anchor.”
“So we are!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, as he felt the sensation of the boat moving. “But it isn’t anything serious. I’ll drop it in a new place where it will hold better.”
As he was putting on a coat and trousers to go out on the little forward deck, where the anchor rope was caught around a cleat, Ted awakened.
“What’s the matter?” he wanted to know. “I’ll go up and help you, Daddy,” he offered, when told of the trouble.
“All right—come along,” agreed his father. “You had better go back to bed,” Mr. Martin suggested to his wife.
“Yes, I’ll stay with Trouble and Janet,” she agreed.
It was dark up on deck, for thePine Treewas anchored in the river away from any town or city. The stars alone dispelled the blackness of the night.
But Mr. Martin had a powerful flashlight with him, and, switching this on, he held it over the side, focusing the electric rays on the water. Then he noticed something that made him exclaim in wonder.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ted.
“Why, we’re going upstream instead of down,” was the answer. “If we were dragging our anchor we would float down the river with the current. We wouldn’t go up as we do when the motor is running.”
“The motor isn’t running now,” said Ted, and it was not—the engine having been shut off when they anchored for the night. “But what makes us move, Daddy?”
“Something has hold of our anchor ropeand is pulling us upstream by it,” said Mr. Martin.
“You mean an alligator?” asked Ted. “Oh, I wish it was daylight! I’d like to see an alligator!”
“No, not an alligator,” said Mr. Martin, with a smile. “There are none of those creatures in these waters. But something is towing us all right.”
“Maybe it’s river pirates,” suggested the Curlytop boy. “You know Mr. Teeter said river pirates once took this boat.”
“It isn’t pirates,” declared Mr. Martin. “They would have to use a boat to tow us away and there isn’t a boat in sight. No, something has hold of our anchor rope beneath the water. See?”
He held the flashlight on the hemp cable. Ted could see where it went down into the water, and just ahead of it were little ripples such as are caused when a stick or a rope is dragged through the water.
“What do you suppose it is, Daddy?” asked the lad.
“Some sort of fish, or other water creature, has got caught in our anchor,” decided Mr. Martin. “It’s towing us.”
“Maybe it’s a big turtle,” said Teddy. “A big mud or snapping turtle.”
“Maybe,” agreed his father. “I’m going to see. Here, Ted, you hold the flashlight and I’ll haul up on the anchor rope.”
The Curlytop boy focused the rays of the powerful little electric torch on the rope extending into the water and Mr. Martin, taking hold of the cable, near the deck cleat around which it was wound, began to pull up. It was hard work, but finally he managed to get some slack, and then Ted cried:
“Oh, I see! It’s a big turtle!”
“Yes, so it is,” agreed his father. For he had pulled up enough of the anchor and rope to show a great snapping turtle with one of his flippers caught on the rope, just where it was fastened to the “mud hook,” as sailors sometimes call an anchor.
“Can you pull him on board, Daddy?” asked Teddy.
“I don’t know that I want to,” was his father’s answer. “He looks like a pretty ugly customer.”
A moment later the turtle gave a wriggle and dropped off into the water with a splash. Pulling him up had loosened his hold on the anchor rope. Then Mr. Martin let go therope, the anchor dropped back to the bottom of the river and held in the mud, bringing the boat to a stop.
“Now I guess we’re all right,” said Mr. Martin, as he went down with Ted, who looked to see the turtle rise again, but it did not.
“What was it?” Mrs. Martin wanted to know.
“A big snapping turtle, crawling along on the bottom of the river, got caught in our anchor and rope,” explained her husband. “He kept right on crawling, pulled up our anchor from the mud, and swam away.
“He was so powerful that he was able to tow our boat,” went on Mr. Martin. “It wasn’t hard to do, once he got it started, and being on the bottom he could get a good hold for his feet, which have claws on them. When I pulled up the rope I loosened his hold.”
“If we could keep that turtle, and train him, he would pull the boat for us, and we wouldn’t have to use gasoline,” said Teddy.
“I’m afraid we’d be several years getting where we want to go,” laughed his father. “A turtle is pretty slow.”
They went back to bed and were not disturbedagain that night. In the morning the Curlytops looked for a sign of the turtle, and even tossed bits of meat into the river, hoping to tempt him to rise, but he did not, probably being asleep in the mud.
They traveled on all that day, having a good time aboard thePine Treeand late that afternoon they reached the place where the river flowed out of Crystal Lake.
“To-morrow we’ll cruise across the lake and reach Bentville,” said Mr. Martin. “Then I’ll deliver the albums and after we spend some time here, motoring about, we’ll cruise back to the lumber camp and get our auto, which ought to have a new wheel on by then.”
“This is a big lake,” said Mrs. Martin, looking across it as evening settled down. “I hope no storms come when we are in the middle.”