In the midst of the storm a voice hailed them from outside. Dave went to the doorway and saw–through the falling rain–Farmer Prosser, standing by his horses’ heads. He had just brought his family home from the picnic and they had scurried into the house.
“What are you doing in there?” demanded the farmer. “Can’t you stop the sails?”
Dave explained, making it as light for Ferd as possible.
“Well! I’ve been expecting something like this ever since the mill was put up. We can’t do anything about it now. But I believe the wind will shift soon. And if it does, perhaps I can stop the sails from outside here.”
It was nearly dark, however, and quite supper-time, before the farmer’s prophecy came true. Then the rain suddenly ceased to fall (the thunder and lightning had long since rolled away into the distance) and the wind dropped.
The farmer and his man rigged a brake to fallagainst the narrow breadth of shaft which extended outside of the mill wall, and so brought pressure to bear upon the revolving axle. This helped bring the sails to a stop.
How thankfully the Go-Aheads and the Busters got out of that tower, it would be difficult to express. Professor Skillings had started up through the rain to see what he could do; but on the way he had picked up a white pebble washed out of the roadside by the rain, and there being something peculiar about it, he stopped under a hedge to examine it by the light of his pocket lamp. Then he must needs proceed with his ever-present geological hammer to break the stone in two. Long after dark his electric lamp was flashing down there on the hillside like some huge wavering firefly.
Not that he could have done a thing to help his young friends. Mrs. Prosser, the farmer’s wife, had the most practical idea of anybody; for, the minute the boys and girls were out of the mill, she insisted that they troop into the farmhouse kitchen and there sit down to her long table and “get outside of” great bowls of milk and bread, with a host of ginger cookies on the side.
So the incident ended happily after all, though Ferdinand Roberts’s spirits drooped for several days. It was well for him to suffer inspirit–as Frankie said: it might teach him a lesson. And he had to pay the farmer for the damage he had done to the machinery.
Ferdinand never had any money. He spent his allowance in advance, borrowing of the other Busters whenever he could. When he got money from home he had to sit down and apportion it all out to his creditors, and then had to begin borrowing again.
He had hard work scraping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser; but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped–only Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd’s mind that it was not honorable to borrow from a girl.
However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to the snapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple of days afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought he wanted.
“Oh, Tubby!” he cried. “Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must have that.”
Tubby looked at him out of heavy-lidded eyes, and croaked: “Snow again, brother; I don’t get your drift!”
When Ferd went from one to the other of his mates they all refused–if not quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually a pauper,with all lines of credit shut to him. It made him serious.
“If all you fellows, and the old prof., should suddenly die on me up here–what would I do?” gasped Ferd. “Why–I’d have to walk home!”
“Or swim,” said Dave, heartlessly. “You’d pawn your canoe, I s’pose.”
Speaking of swimming, that was an art in which several of the boys, as well as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside the early morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either at Green Knoll Camp, or off the boys’ camp on Gannet Island.
The boys built a good diving raft and anchored it in deep water after much hard work. The good swimmers among the girls–especially Wyn and Grace–liked to paddle over to the raft and dive from it.
Late in the afternoon the Go-Aheads had come to the raft in their canoes dressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had gone off on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not in sight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.
“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. “Now we can have a good time without those trifling boys bothering us. I’m going to learn to dive properly, Wyn.”
“Sure,” returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. “Now’s the time,” and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.
The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vast enjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat upon the edge of the float to rest.
Wyn dived overboard.
She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under the surface she turned and went deeper. She was like an otter in the water, and having stuffed her ears with cotton she felt prepared to remain below a long time.
Once she had opened her eyes while diving with Bess, and she thought she saw a shadowy something on the bottom of the lake that was neither a boulder nor a waterlogged snag.
She beat her way to the bottom as rapidly as possible; but the light did not follow her. She could see nothing when she opened her eyes. It seemed as though something overshadowed her.
The water was tugging at her; she could not remain below for long. But as she turned to drift up again, her shoulder touched something. She struck out and reached it. But the blow reallypushed her away and she floated upward toward the surface.
When she paddled to the raft she was panting, and Frank demanded:
“What’s the matter, Wyn? You look as if you’d seen a ghost I believe you stay down too long.”
“No,” gasped Wyn. “I–I hit something.”
“What was it?”
“Why–why, it looked like a wagon. ’Twas something.”
“I suppose so!” laughed Frank. “Wagon with a load of hay on it–eh?”
Wyn said nothing more. She sat upon the float, with her knees drawn up and hugged in her brown arms, and thought. The other girls could get nothing out of her.
She wasn’t dreaming, however. She was thinking to a serious purpose.
Ithadlooked like a wagon–as much as it looked like anything else. But, of course, she had seen it very dimly. She knew by the touch that it was of wood; but it was no waterlogged tree, although there was slime upon it It was not rough; but smooth.
Of course, it wasn’t a wagon. Nor was it a huge box. Neither wagon nor box could havegot out here, fifteen or twenty rods off Gannet Island.
Wyn glanced over toward the island and saw that she could look right into the cove where John Jarley had met with his accident. According to the boatman’s story, as he went overboard from the motor boat he gave the wheel a twist that should have shot her directly out of the cove toward the middle of the lake.
“But suppose the boat didn’t respond, after all, to the twist of the wheel?” Wyn was thinking. “Or, suppose the slant of the rudder was not as great as he supposed?”
She fixed in her mind about the spot where the thing lay she had hit, and then glanced back to the tree on the bank of the cove, that showed the long scar where the branch was torn off.
The line between the two was clear. The motor boat might have run out exactly on that course and missed the wooded point which guarded the entrance to the cove.
Suppose the thing she had hit when she dived was theBright Eyes, Dr. Shelton’s lost motor boat?
Wyn was about to shout to the other girls–to call them around her to divulge the idea that had come into her mind–when a hail from the water announced the return of the Busters.
She remembered Mr. Lavine’s promise. The two clubs were rivals in this matter. Wouldn’t it be a fine thing for the Go-Aheads to own a motor boat all by themselves!
Wyn got up and dived again. But she did not dive toward the mysterious something that she had previously found. She swam stoutly instead to meet the coming Busters.
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 itwasthe 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 theboyswould 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 theBright 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 theBright Eyeswas 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.
Thiswas 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 tohim. Ofcourse, 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.
“Mydear! 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 hownecessary it was for the matter to be looked into secretly. Mr. Lavine had promised to give a motor boat to whichever club found the sunkenBright Eyesand 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 theCoquette. 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 itistheBright Eyes—”
Polly insisted upon hunting out a couple of oldblankets 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. “ForIcouldn’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 itis” gasped Wyn. “Not alone foryoursake, Polly. Why, if it is theBright 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. TheCoquettewas 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 thefoam 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 theBright 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, theCoquetteis 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 theirown 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 ofthat,” observed Wyn Mallory, with a little shiver. “Do you suppose we really are being followed?”
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 wedidfind 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. TheBright Eyeswas 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 theCoquettecarried 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 asthey 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 aboardthatbateau?”
“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 theCoquettegot 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 theCoquettefloats 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. Ebis 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 youdosplash 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 reallyistheBright 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 theCoquetteand 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 issuretheBright Eyes?”
“It is a motor boat. I went right down to the deck, and scrambled around it. There are surely nottwomotor 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, andput up the sail again. As theCoquetteshot 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.”
Wyn got into her canoe in sight of Green Knoll Camp, and leaving Polly to work theCoquettehome 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 allthat.”
“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 asthey 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 nowand 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 aboutthat, 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 fallingenemy. 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 goatdidlook 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 withlaughter, 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.
“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 theBright 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 takethe 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 youwhy. But the word is now: Look sharp!”
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 theBright 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 toyou, 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–nowdo 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 fivewere plainly intending to offer resistance to the ugly boatmen.
“Now, girls,” begged the captain of the Go-Aheads, firmly, “let us showsomecourage, at least. The boys are willing to fight our battle—”
“Ourbattle?” 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 thatwehave 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 forwardto 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 justmean? I wish I had something to hit them with–I do! I believe I’ll get out on the raft withmypaddle.”
“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’sSunshine Boy!” cried Percy Havel.
“And thatisPolly 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 boatmendidunderstand the doctor, for the trespasser aboard the raftleaped 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 theSunshine Boywas allowed to drift in close to the float.
“Now, boys,” said Dr. Shelton, genially, “I understand you have found my oldBright Eyesunder 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 ifit turns out all right.Thatis reward enough for us.”
“Humph! you feel that way about it; do you, Miss Mallory?” queried the doctor. “Just the same, if theBright Eyesreally 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 theBright Eyesand the silver images, or not!”
And the question, Is it theBright 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?”