Wyn's Camping Days; Or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club

by Amy Bell Marlowe

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  A FRIEND IN NEED

  It was early on the next day that Bessie received a message from herfather for the whole club:

  "Look for me in a few hours. Shall run up to see what Wyn has done as soon as I can get away. If it is all right, you shall have new boat this season.--Henry Lavine."

  A man brought it over from the Forge. The girls were delighted with thenews. A guard had been set over the spot where the sunken boat lay andDr. Shelton and Mr. Jarley were making arrangements to have a derrickbarge towed up to Gannet Island, so that the old _Bright Eyes_could be brought to the surface quickly.

  Naturally the Busters were too much interested in these proceedings tocome over to Green Knoll Camp; and the girls had had so much excitementand exercise of late that they were inclined to take matters quietly forthe time being.

  Therefore, there was not a canoe on the lake when a fussy, smoky littlemotor boat, late in the afternoon, came into the lake from theWintinooski and puffed out into deep water, evidently bound for eitherthe Island or Green Knoll Camp.

  The deep cove, at the head of which the little red and yellow cottage ofthe Jarleys was set, was like a big bay in the contour of the lakeshore. It was out here in this deep water that Wyn Mallory and BessLavine had been swamped by the squall. From the docks at the Forge tothe point east of Green Knoll, where the girls' camp was situated, wasall of eight miles. When this little motor boat had sputtered alonguntil she was about half way between those two points, she suddenlystopped.

  The girls had been lazily on the lookout for Mr. Lavine's appearance andearlier in the day had kept the camp spyglass busy. Now Frank suddenlycaught it up again and focused it almost at once on the stalled motorboat.

  "Oh! what's that?" was her excited demand. "Girls! there's a boat wemissed before."

  "Where?" drawled Grace, lazily.

  "It isn't father; is it?" demanded Bess.

  "How do I know? It's a power boat----Goodness, what's that?"

  She jumped so that Wyn came to her side quickly. "Let me see, Frank,"she begged.

  "There's--there's a fire!" gasped Frankie.

  The girls came running at her cry. Even Mrs. Havel left her seat andstepped out of the shade of the beech tree to scan the water under herhand.

  "I see smoke!" cried Percy.

  "Dear me! is the boat really afire?" demanded Mina Everett.

  "Of course, it can't be father," declared Bess. "He knows how to takecare of a motor boat."

  Through the glass Wyn, who now had it, saw the flames leaping from underthe hood of the boat, while a dense plume of smoke began to reel away onthe breeze that was blowing.

  "It is afire!" she gasped "Oh! it _is_! What can we do?"

  "We could never reach it in our canoes before the boat burns to thewater's edge," cried Frankie.

  They could see two figures on the doomed boat. Through the glass Wyncould see them so plainly that she knew one to be a waterman, while theother was much better dressed. Indeed, she feared that she recognizedthe figure of this second man.

  "Let me have the glass, Wyn," said Bessie, eagerly.

  But Wyn, for once, was disobliging. "You can't see anything--much," shesaid. "Come on, Bess! let's try and paddle out to them."

  "And have them swamp our canoes if they tried to climb in," said MissLavine. "No, thanks!"

  "Come on!" cried Frank, joining in. "We ought to try and help."

  "What's the use?" drawled Bessie, walking away. "And you're mean not tolet me have the glass, Wyn."

  "Oh, come on and take it!" gasped Wyn.

  "Don't want it now," snapped Bess, who took offense rather easily attimes. "You can keep the old thing."

  Wyn sighed with relief. Then she whirled quickly and ran down to thebeach, with Frank right at her heels. They were the only two girls wholaunched their canoes. Wyn had brought the glass with her.

  "Now I _know_ Bess won't see him," she exclaimed, almost in awhisper.

  "What's that?" demanded Frankie, who overheard. "What do you mean, Wyn?"

  "I believe that is Mr. Lavine out there," said the captain of theGo-Aheads. "Oh, Frank! paddle hard!"

  And it _was_ Mr. Lavine. He had hired this little gasoline boat,with its owner to run it, at Denton, and had paid the owner an extrafive-dollar bill to force the boat to its very highest speed (and thatwasn't much) all the way up the Wintinooski. Mr. Lavine was in a hurry;he was in too much of a hurry, as it proved.

  Somewhere off Meade's Forge he began to smell the gasoline all toostrongly. There was a leak somewhere; but the boat kept on.

  Finally even the reckless driver grew frightened and shut off the spark.

  "There's a leak, boss," he drawled. "Sure as aigs is aigs!"

  Mr. Lavine tore up one of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. Aman with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilgein the cockpit.

  "Leak!" he exclaimed, wrathfully. "I should say you had been using theboat's bottom for a gasoline tank. Why! we might have been blown up adozen times."

  "I expect the leak's in the feed pipe," confessed the boatman. "But Ithought I'd got her fixed las' week."

  "You've got _us_ fixed," snapped Mr. Lavine. "'Way out here in themiddle of Lake Honotonka, too--and I in a hurry."

  "Wal," said the man, "I'll putty up the leak and you see if you kin swabout the boat. I wouldn't dare try and ignite her again with so muchgasoline around."

  "I--should--say--not!" gasped the gentleman, and removed his coat,rolled up his sleeves and his trousers, and set to work.

  They both labored like beavers for half an hour and then the boatman didthe very silliest thing one can imagine. He had worked hard and, being aman addicted to tobacco, he felt the need of a smoke.

  He pulled out his pipe, filled it, unnoticed by Mr. Lavine, who wasstill trying to swab out the last of the bilge and gasoline, andscratched a match. He was directly in front of the hood of the boat whenhe did it. The next moment there was a flash, a roar, and the man wasflung the length of the boat, against Mr. Lavine in the stern, and thetwo almost went overboard.

  The foolish smoker lost his mustache, eyebrows, and lashes, and a lot ofhis front hair. He was scorched quite severely, too; but the peril whichmenaced them with the front of the boat in flames drove the thought ofhis burns from the fellow's mind.

  "And I can't swim a stroke, boss!" he cried.

  "You have nothing on me there," declared Mr. Lavine. "I have never beenable to master more than the first few motions in the art of swimming."

  But the flames were springing higher and they had nothing with which tothrow water on the fire. The man had not even a bailing tin in hismoribund old craft. Mr. Lavine had been using a swab and was coveredwith grease and dirty water.

  This became a small thing, however--and that within a very few minutes.The boat was doomed and both knew it.

  Mr. Lavine tried to tear up more of the grating under foot so as to makesomething that would float and upon which they might bear themselves upin the water. But the boards were too thin.

  Then he tried to unship the rudder (the singed boatman was no use at allin this emergency) and so make use of that as a float. But the boltswere rusted and the boat had begun to swing around so that the fire blewright into the stern.

  They both had to leap overboard.

  It was a serious situation indeed. By Mr. Lavine's advice they paddledtoward the bow, one on either side of the boat, for the flames wererushing aft.

  The bow was a mere shell, however. The flames had already almostconsumed it, and soon the fire fairly ate through the bows at the waterlevel. The water rushed in and so sank the boat by the head.

  Not that the boat went straight down. The stern rose in the water andthe two men, in their desperate strait, gazed at the flames above theirheads.

  Had it been night the fire would have been like a great torch in themiddle of the lake--and it would have brought help from all directions.As it was, the black smoke first thrown
off, and then the steam,attracted more than the girls of Green Knoll Camp to the scene.

  At the landing Mr. Jarley was splicing some heavy rope which he expectedto use the next day when the sunken _Bright Eyes_ would be actuallyraised. Polly saw the smoke first from the cottage and ran out to tellhim.

  "One of those motor boats is afire, Father!" she cried. Instantly theboatman set about going to the rescue. It was a fair day, but there wasa good breeze blowing. Jarley took the _Coquette_.

  He had no idea to whom he was playing the friend in need when he sailedthe catboat down upon the scene of the disaster. It was a chance to helptwo fellow beings and the boatman cared not who they were.

  Of course the sailing craft beat out the two frantically paddling girlsfrom Green Knoll Camp. Yet it was still a long way from the spot whenthe last of the burning boat seemed to sink completely and the flameswere snuffed out by the waters of the lake.