CHAPTER III
A CLOSE CALL
Now that the danger was over, the crowd began to melt away, and theboys, who in the excitement had forgotten all about lunch, suddenlyremembered that they had been overlooking what was to all of them a dutyand to most of them a pleasure and made a break for the dining hall.
Pee Wee was especially remorseful that he had so far forgotten himself.
“Gee!” he observed, as he took out his watch. “Lunch time has been overfor more than half an hour. I hope they haven’t cleared the table.”
“If they haven’t, you will when you get to it,” jibed Skeets. “That’sone place where you can be depended on to work.”
“That isn’t work—it’s fun,” admitted Pee Wee, as he started to put hiswatch back in his pocket. But in his haste it dropped from his fingersand fell with a bang to the ground.
There was an exclamation from the boys, who crowded around Pee Wee as helooked ruefully at the watch, whose crystal had been broken.
“Did it stop?” asked Fred.
“Of course it stopped when it hit the ground,” put in Billy. “What didyou expect it to do—go right through to China?”
Pee Wee favored Billy with a glare that expressed his opinion of thatlad’s frivolity.
“Of all the idiots—” he began, and then words failed him and he tappedhis forehead significantly.
Nothing abashed, the graceless Billy grinned.
“It wasn’t so bad,” he said complacently. “I don’t know how those thingscome to me but they do—just like that,” he added snapping his fingersairily.
“He hates himself—I don’t think,” remarked Fred, making a playful passat Billy, who dodged so adroitly that the blow passed over his head andcaught the luckless Pee Wee in the stomach almost making him drop hiswatch again.
“Say, what are you up to?” he demanded indignantly, rubbing the injuredspot with his hand. “Haven’t I had hard luck enough for one day withoutyou fellows rubbing it in?”
“You seem to be doing all the rubbing,” laughed Fred. “Sorry, old boy,but that stomach of yours is so big that nothing can miss it.”
“Stop picking on poor little Pee Wee,” chuckled Sparrow. “Cheer up, PeeWee. What if another Ingersoll did bite the dust? You’ll have a goodexcuse now for being late at recitations.”
This silver lining to the cloud was not without its effect on Pee Wee,and putting the battered watch into his pocket, successfully this time,he hurried to the dining hall, where the savory odors of the meal thatthe housekeeper had prepared soon made him forget all his troubles.
The boys at the tables were bubbling over with interest at the stirringevents they had witnessed, and Bobby and the rest of his crew had allthey could do in answering the questions that were showered upon them.
“Don’t you feel awfully sore and used up, Bobby?” queried Howell Purdy,his voice a little muffled because his mouth was so full.
“Not so very,” responded Bobby. “I suppose I will to-morrow though. Thesecond day is always worse than the first.”
“If our boys ever pulled that way in a race, we’d have no trouble inbeating out Belden,” remarked Shiner. “You fellows were simply liftingthat boat out of the water. As it was, you didn’t get there a minute toosoon either.”
“Not a second too soon,” corrected Sparrow. “That fellow who couldn’tswim will never come nearer to death than he was to-day. My heart wasjust about in my mouth when I saw him go down.”
“Lee had a close call too when he was pulled overboard,” put in Skeets.
“Oh, as for that, Lee can swim like a fish,” remarked Fred. “But he gota wetting just the same and had to sit in his wet clothes until we gotback to the float. I hope it hasn’t hurt him.”
“He isn’t very strong, but he’s as plucky as they make them,” commentedSkeets, “and he certainly knows how to swing an oar.”
“We had one bit of luck to help us out,” said Bobby, “and that was thatone of the boats hadn’t been put away in canvas. If it had been, wecould never have got it out in time. As it was, it was close to thedoor, so we could slide it out in a jiffy.”
When at last the meal was finished and even Pee Wee had had enough toeat, Bobby’s first thought was of Lee. He saw Mr. Carrier hurryingthrough the hall and asked him about the Southern boy whom he hadalready learned to like very much.
“Lee Cartier was very badly chilled,” was Mr. Carrier’s response, “andthat, combined with over exertion, has made the doctor a little anxiousabout him. I guess it would be better for you boys not to see him for awhile. But the other boys are getting along all right, and they justtold me that they would like to see you and the other members of theboat crew that rescued them. By the way, Blake, you and the other boyswho went with you did nobly to-day and I’m proud of you. It was asplendid piece of work.”
Bobby flushed at the praise and would have disclaimed any specialcredit, but Mr. Carrier smiled and went on. Bobby hunted up Sparrow andFred, and the three went to the room which had been placed at thedisposal of the boys they had rescued.
They found the four seated before a glowing fire, wrapped in hotblankets and eating with evident relish an abundant meal that had beenbrought up to them. Apart from their rumpled hair, they bore no sign ofthe ordeal through which they had passed, and which had so nearly costthe lives of all of them.
They jumped to their feet as their three rescuers came in and surroundedthem, shaking hands and offering fervent thanks for the help they hadbrought them at the moment of their deepest need.
“Why, you are Belden boys!” exclaimed Bobby, as he took a good look atthem. “I suppose I ought to have known that before, but I was so busythat I didn’t have a chance to see much of your faces.”
“Then, too, we looked so much like drowned rats that you probablywouldn’t have recognized us anyway,” laughed the eldest one of thequartette. “Yes, we’re Belden boys, all right, and live ones too, thanksto you. If it hadn’t been for you fellows, all four of us would havebeen at the bottom of the lake by this time. My name is Wilson and thisis Thompson and this is Livingston and this is Miner,” he added,introducing himself and his companions.
“I know Livingston and Miner already,” responded Bobby, after havingintroduced Sparrow and Fred in turn. “They played against our team inthe football game yesterday.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Livingston, while Miner smiled assent, “and wedidn’t think when we were trying to keep you away from our goal linethen that you’d be saving our lives to-day.”
“Tell us how it all happened,” said Bobby, as the party seatedthemselves comfortably before the open fire.
“I suppose it was a bit of foolishness on our part,” replied Wilson, whoseemed by common consent to be the spokesman of the Belden group, “andI’m the most foolish of the lot, because I was the one who proposed thetrip. We were all feeling a little sore and blue over the defeat ourteam suffered yesterday, and to get our minds off it I proposed to therest of the fellows here that we should take a row on the lake. Wenoticed a little water in the bottom of the boat when we started, butthought that might be due to the rain we had a few days ago. It was onlywhen we had got out beyond the middle of the lake that we noticed thatthe boat was leaking badly. We tried to stuff the leak with, ourhandkerchiefs, but in jabbing them in with an oar, we pushed too hardand widened the crack so that we could do nothing with it, and the waterbegan to come in faster than we could bail it out. This side of the lakewas the nearer, and we began to pull toward it as hard as we could. Itwas just about that time I guess that you saw us. I tell you we feltgood when we saw you rush to the landing and get out the boat. It bracedus up and made us keep up the fight till the last minute. But toward theend I thought it was all up with us. Thompson here was the worst off ofany of us, for he can’t swim a stroke.”
“I sure thought that I was a goner,” broke in Thompson. “I think I musthave gone all through the pain of drowning, for the last thing Iremember was that my lungs seeme
d bursting. I don’t even recall beingpulled into the boat. It sure was a close call.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby soberly as he gazed into the fire, “it was a closecall.”
Bobby Blake on a Plantation; Or, Lost in the Great Swamp Page 3
