CHAPTER XXIII
WYN HITS SOMETHING
In the midst of the storm a voice hailed them from outside. Dave went tothe doorway and saw--through the falling rain--Farmer Prosser, standingby his horses' heads. He had just brought his family home from thepicnic and they had scurried into the house.
"What are you doing in there?" demanded the farmer. "Can't you stop thesails?"
Dave explained, making it as light for Ferd as possible.
"Well! I've been expecting something like this ever since the mill wasput up. We can't do anything about it now. But I believe the wind willshift soon. And if it does, perhaps I can stop the sails from outsidehere."
It was nearly dark, however, and quite supper-time, before the farmer'sprophecy came true. Then the rain suddenly ceased to fall (the thunderand lightning had long since rolled away into the distance) and the winddropped.
The farmer and his man rigged a brake to fall against the narrow breadthof shaft which extended outside of the mill wall, and so broughtpressure to bear upon the revolving axle. This helped bring the sails toa stop.
How thankfully the Go-Aheads and the Busters got out of that tower, itwould be difficult to express. Professor Skillings had started upthrough the rain to see what he could do; but on the way he had pickedup a white pebble washed out of the roadside by the rain, and therebeing something peculiar about it, he stopped under a hedge to examineit by the light of his pocket lamp. Then he must needs proceed with hisever-present geological hammer to break the stone in two. Long afterdark his electric lamp was flashing down there on the hillside like somehuge 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 thatthey troop into the farmhouse kitchen and there sit down to her longtable and "get outside of" great bowls of milk and bread, with a host ofginger cookies on the side.
So the incident ended happily after all, though Ferdinand Roberts'sspirits 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 paythe 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 fromhome he had to sit down and apportion it all out to his creditors, andthen 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--onlyDave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd's mind that it was not honorableto borrow from a girl.
However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to thesnapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple ofdays afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought hewanted.
"Oh, Tubby!" he cried. "Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must havethat."
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--ifnot quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually apauper, 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 uphere--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, aswell as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside theearly morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either atGreen Knoll Camp, or off the boys' camp on Gannet Island.
The boys built a good diving raft and anchored it in deep water aftermuch hard work. The good swimmers among the girls--especially Wyn andGrace--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 canoesdressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had goneoff on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not insight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.
"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. "Now we can have a goodtime without those trifling boys bothering us. I'm going to learn todive properly, Wyn."
"Sure," returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. "Now's thetime," and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.
The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vastenjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat uponthe edge of the float to rest.
Wyn dived overboard.
She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under thesurface she turned and went deeper. She was like an otter in the water,and having stuffed her ears with cotton she felt prepared to remainbelow a long time.
Once she had opened her eyes while diving with Bess, and she thought shesaw a shadowy something on the bottom of the lake that was neither aboulder nor a waterlogged snag.
She beat her way to the bottom as rapidly as possible; but the light didnot follow her. She could see nothing when she opened her eyes. Itseemed as though something overshadowed her.
The water was tugging at her; she could not remain below for long. Butas she turned to drift up again, her shoulder touched something. Shestruck out and reached it. But the blow really pushed her away and shefloated 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 youstay 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 upand hugged in her brown arms, and thought. The other girls could getnothing out of her.
She wasn't dreaming, however. She was thinking to a serious purpose.
It _had_ looked like a wagon--as much as it looked like anythingelse. But, of course, she had seen it very dimly. She knew by the touchthat it was of wood; but it was no waterlogged tree, although there wasslime upon it It was not rough; but smooth.
Of course, it wasn't a wagon. Nor was it a huge box. Neither wagon norbox could have got out here, fifteen or twenty rods off Gannet Island.
Wyn glanced over toward the island and saw that she could look rightinto the cove where John Jarley had met with his accident. According tothe boatman's story, as he went overboard from the motor boat he gavethe wheel a twist that should have shot her directly out of the covetoward the middle of the lake.
"But suppose the boat didn't respond, after all, to the twist of thewheel?" Wyn was thinking. "Or, suppose the slant of the rudder was notas 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 showedthe long scar where the branch was torn off.
The line between the two was clear. The motor boat might have run outexactly on that course and missed the wooded point which guarded theentrance to the cove.
Suppose the thing she had hit when she dived was the _Bright Eyes_,Dr. Shelton's lost motor boat?
Wyn was about to shout to the other girls--to call them around her todivulge the idea that had come into her mind--when a hail from the waterannounced the return of the Busters.
She remembered Mr. Lavine's promise. The two clubs were rivals in thismatter. Wouldn't it be a fine thing for the Go-Aheads to own a motorboat all by themselves!
Wyn got up and dived again. But she did not dive toward the mysterioussomething that she had previously found. She swam stoutly instead tomeet the coming Busters.