Читать книгу: «Bobby Blake on a Plantation: or, Lost in the Great Swamp», страница 2
CHAPTER III
A CLOSE CALL
Now that the danger was over, the crowd began to melt away, and the boys, who in the excitement had forgotten all about lunch, suddenly remembered that they had been overlooking what was to all of them a duty and 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 over for 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’s one place where you can be depended on to work.”
“That isn’t work – it’s fun,” admitted Pee Wee, as he started to put his watch back in his pocket. But in his haste it dropped from his fingers and fell with a bang to the ground.
There was an exclamation from the boys, who crowded around Pee Wee as he looked 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 did you expect it to do – go right through to China?”
Pee Wee favored Billy with a glare that expressed his opinion of that lad’s frivolity.
“Of all the idiots – ” he began, and then words failed him and he tapped his forehead significantly.
Nothing abashed, the graceless Billy grinned.
“It wasn’t so bad,” he said complacently. “I don’t know how those things come to me but they do – just like that,” he added snapping his fingers airily.
“He hates himself – I don’t think,” remarked Fred, making a playful pass at Billy, who dodged so adroitly that the blow passed over his head and caught the luckless Pee Wee in the stomach almost making him drop his watch again.
“Say, what are you up to?” he demanded indignantly, rubbing the injured spot with his hand. “Haven’t I had hard luck enough for one day without you 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, Pee Wee. What if another Ingersoll did bite the dust? You’ll have a good excuse 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 that the housekeeper had prepared soon made him forget all his troubles.
The boys at the tables were bubbling over with interest at the stirring events they had witnessed, and Bobby and the rest of his crew had all they 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. The second day is always worse than the first.”
“If our boys ever pulled that way in a race, we’d have no trouble in beating out Belden,” remarked Shiner. “You fellows were simply lifting that boat out of the water. As it was, you didn’t get there a minute too soon either.”
“Not a second too soon,” corrected Sparrow. “That fellow who couldn’t swim will never come nearer to death than he was to-day. My heart was just 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 got a wetting just the same and had to sit in his wet clothes until we got back to the float. I hope it hasn’t hurt him.”
“He isn’t very strong, but he’s as plucky as they make them,” commented Skeets, “and he certainly knows how to swing an oar.”
“We had one bit of luck to help us out,” said Bobby, “and that was that one of the boats hadn’t been put away in canvas. If it had been, we could never have got it out in time. As it was, it was close to the door, so we could slide it out in a jiffy.”
When at last the meal was finished and even Pee Wee had had enough to eat, Bobby’s first thought was of Lee. He saw Mr. Carrier hurrying through the hall and asked him about the Southern boy whom he had already learned to like very much.
“Lee Cartier was very badly chilled,” was Mr. Carrier’s response, “and that, combined with over exertion, has made the doctor a little anxious about him. I guess it would be better for you boys not to see him for a while. But the other boys are getting along all right, and they just told me that they would like to see you and the other members of the boat crew that rescued them. By the way, Blake, you and the other boys who went with you did nobly to-day and I’m proud of you. It was a splendid piece of work.”
Bobby flushed at the praise and would have disclaimed any special credit, but Mr. Carrier smiled and went on. Bobby hunted up Sparrow and Fred, and the three went to the room which had been placed at the disposal of the boys they had rescued.
They found the four seated before a glowing fire, wrapped in hot blankets and eating with evident relish an abundant meal that had been brought up to them. Apart from their rumpled hair, they bore no sign of the ordeal through which they had passed, and which had so nearly cost the lives of all of them.
They jumped to their feet as their three rescuers came in and surrounded them, shaking hands and offering fervent thanks for the help they had brought them at the moment of their deepest need.
“Why, you are Belden boys!” exclaimed Bobby, as he took a good look at them. “I suppose I ought to have known that before, but I was so busy that I didn’t have a chance to see much of your faces.”
“Then, too, we looked so much like drowned rats that you probably wouldn’t have recognized us anyway,” laughed the eldest one of the quartette. “Yes, we’re Belden boys, all right, and live ones too, thanks to you. If it hadn’t been for you fellows, all four of us would have been at the bottom of the lake by this time. My name is Wilson and this is 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 having introduced Sparrow and Fred in turn. “They played against our team in the football game yesterday.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Livingston, while Miner smiled assent, “and we didn’t think when we were trying to keep you away from our goal line then that you’d be saving our lives to-day.”
“Tell us how it all happened,” said Bobby, as the party seated themselves comfortably before the open fire.
“I suppose it was a bit of foolishness on our part,” replied Wilson, who seemed by common consent to be the spokesman of the Belden group, “and I’m the most foolish of the lot, because I was the one who proposed the trip. We were all feeling a little sore and blue over the defeat our team suffered yesterday, and to get our minds off it I proposed to the rest of the fellows here that we should take a row on the lake. We noticed a little water in the bottom of the boat when we started, but thought that might be due to the rain we had a few days ago. It was only when we had got out beyond the middle of the lake that we noticed that the boat was leaking badly. We tried to stuff the leak with, our handkerchiefs, but in jabbing them in with an oar, we pushed too hard and widened the crack so that we could do nothing with it, and the water began to come in faster than we could bail it out. This side of the lake was the nearer, and we began to pull toward it as hard as we could. It was just about that time I guess that you saw us. I tell you we felt good when we saw you rush to the landing and get out the boat. It braced us up and made us keep up the fight till the last minute. But toward the end I thought it was all up with us. Thompson here was the worst off of any of us, for he can’t swim a stroke.”
“I sure thought that I was a goner,” broke in Thompson. “I think I must have gone all through the pain of drowning, for the last thing I remember was that my lungs seemed bursting. I don’t even recall being pulled into the boat. It sure was a close call.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby soberly as he gazed into the fire, “it was a close call.”
CHAPTER IV
FACING THE BULLY
There was silence in the room for a minute or two. The boys all sensed the nearness of the tragedy that had been so narrowly averted, and each had an inward shudder as he thought of what might have been.
But though the death angel had passed so close that they had almost heard the rustling of his wings, here they were after all alive and safe, and their spirits rose while their hearts swelled with thankfulness.
“Well,” remarked Wilson, breaking the silence, “this will be a lesson to me, as the darky said when he was about to be hanged. I don’t get in any more boats unless they’re as dry as a bone.”
“And even then I’ll keep out of them,” said Thompson with emphasis. “Dry land is good enough for me, at least, until I learn how to swim.”
“Wouldn’t care to have us row you back to Belden, eh?” queried Bobby with a grin.
“Not on your life,” laughed Miner. “They’ve ’phoned over that they’ll send an auto for us and we’ll go back in style. But we’ll never forget till the last day of our lives what you fellows have done for us. And if I ever hear any fellow knock Rockledge, he’ll have a fight on his hands right away.”
Bobby laughed, as he and his two companions rose to go.
“Oh, Belden and Rockledge will have many a fight yet,” he said, “but they’ll be good-natured fights on the baseball or football fields, and may the best school win.”
They exchanged hearty farewells with the Belden boys, and went out of the room and down the corridor. On the way they passed Bill Snath, who favored them with a malicious stare in passing and uttered the word “heroes,” in a sneering tone, as he went by. It was spoken in a low tone, but loud enough for Fred, who was nearest him, to hear it, and his temper took fire at once.
“What was that you said, Bill Snath?” he demanded, as he turned on his heel.
“Nobody spoke to you, redhead,” returned Snath, snapping out the epithet with a good deal of relish.
This was like a spark to powder, and Fred’s face became as red as his hair.
“You take that back!” he cried, rushing up to Snath, who had stopped and was regarding him with a tantalizing grin.
“Suppose I don’t, what are you going to do about it?” demanded the bully, his tone the more confident because he could see behind Fred’s back the tall figure of Mr. Leith, the head teacher, coming up from the other end of the hall.
“I’ll show you what I’m going to do about it,” Fred replied, and was starting to unbutton his coat, when Bobby, who had come up, restrained him.
“Mr. Leith’s coming, Fred,” he warned him. “Cool off now and come along. He’s close behind you now.”
There was no need of saying anything else, and Fred by a great effort restrained himself. Mr. Leith came by and looked curiously at the flushed face of the boy. He said nothing however, but when he had reached the other end of the hall stood there as if in meditation.
“It’s lucky for you that he came along just then,” Fred said in a low tone to the bully. “If you have nerve enough to come somewhere out of sight of the school, we’ll settle this thing right now.”
“You’re three to one,” Snath replied. “If you were alone I’d make you sing small.”
“They’ll only go along to see fair play,” answered Fred. “But if you like, I’ll go with you alone. I’ve taken about all I’m going to take from you. Bill Snath.”
“You’ll have to take all I care to give you,” drawled Snath, feeling perfectly safe as long as Mr. Leith was in sight.
As at that moment Mr. Leith began to come back along the hall, there was nothing more to be done or said and the boys separated, Snath sauntering toward the teacher with affected nonchalance, while Fred with Bobby and Sparrow went in the opposite direction.
“That fellow gets my goat,” growled Fred. “He never goes past without a nasty look or word. He’s getting just as bad as Sandy Jackson, and he needs to be taken down.”
“He’s aching for a thrashing,” agreed Bobby, “and that’s twice to-day he’s come near getting it. But if I were you, Fred, I’d take as little notice of him as I could. If you hadn’t paid any attention to what he said about heroes, he’d have thought we didn’t hear him, and that would have made him sore. As it is, he’s tickled to death because he thinks he put one over on us.”
“But he called me redhead!” exclaimed Fred, “and no one can do that in earnest without a fight.”
“That of course is different,” admitted Bobby. “I wouldn’t let any one call me names and get away with it. But as far as we can, the best thing is to let him alone. Some time or other he’ll get to the end of his rope, just as his pal did and get out of Rockledge School.”
“I guess Bobby’s about right,” remarked Sparrow. “I suppose it’s always better to go round a skunk than take a kick at him. But I don’t blame Fred for feeling sore. I feel the same way.”
The chums went out on the steps of the school, where they found a group of their friends waiting for them.
“How are the fellows getting along who were nearly drowned?” asked Skeets.
“Fine and dandy,” replied Fred, who by this time had regained his usual good nature. “Not one of them is going to kick the bucket. And what do you think, fellows? They’re all Belden boys.”
“Belden boys!” echoed Shiner. “Our chief rivals! That’s what you call heaping coals of fire on their head.”
“I guess coals of fire would have felt comfortable when they were out in the lake,” laughed Mouser. “But I’m mighty glad they’re getting along all right. If any of them had died, I’d expect to hear their ghosts walking about the halls of the building to-night.”
“Listen, to him talk,” said Howell Purdy scornfully. “You can’t hear ghosts walk. They just float around as soft as anything.”
“That’s right,” came in a chorus from the boys, who had involuntarily gathered a little closer together at the talk of ghosts.
“No, he isn’t right,” chirped up Billy. “Mouser had it straight when he talked about hearing ghosts walking.”
“There you are,” said Mouser, glad of the reinforcement.
“It’s easy enough to say that,” put in Howell, “but how are you going to prove it? All the books I ever read say that they don’t make any noise. You can’t bear them coming. So what do you make of that?” he added turning triumphantly toward Billy.
The latter however seemed not to be a bit disturbed.
“All the same I’m right,” he asserted with quiet confidence.
“How can you prove it?” demanded Howell defiantly.
“That’s the talk” came from the others. “Prove it, Billy. Put up or shut up.”
“All right,” replied Billy, accepting the challenge. “I know that ghosts walk because I’ve heard them do it!”
CHAPTER V
PUTTING ONE OVER
There was a shout of amazement from the boys in which could be detected an element of unbelief and derision. But there was also a note of awe that was balm to Billy’s soul. Any one who was so familiar with the supernatural was not to be regarded lightly. Billy felt that he had scored a decided hit and swelled out his chest importantly.
“When did you hear them walk?” asked Skeets, looking about him a little apprehensively.
“You’re just kidding,” declared Shiner, stoutly. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I think that Billy’s getting us on a string,” affirmed Fred, although his eager eyes showed that he was none too sure of it.
Billy waited for the storm of protest and comment to subside.
“I mean just what I said,” he affirmed. “Cross my heart and hope to die if I don’t.”
This solemn affirmation helped to quell the doubters, especially as there was nothing to arouse suspicion in Billy’s sober face.
“Well then, tell us all about it,” urged Mouser, who was anxious to obtain confirmation of his own belief.
“It was in our town when old General Bixby was buried,” explained Billy, amid a silence in which one could have heard a pin drop. “There was a big turnout and the band played awful solemn music.”
He paused for a moment.
“Yes, go on, go on,” urged Skeets excitedly. “Was it then that you heard the ghosts walk?”
“Yes,” replied Billy. “It was then that I heard the Dead March.”
There was a moment of stupefaction, as the idea filtered into the minds of Billy’s dupes. Bobby grasped it first.
“Run, Billy run!” he counseled. “They’ll kill you for that!”
But Billy had already edged his way to the rim of the group and by the time they lunged for him was safely out of reach. Then he danced a jig and went through various gestures expressive of his pity and contempt for the victims who had let themselves so readily be taken in.
“It’s too easy,” he shouted. “It really isn’t sportsmanlike to take advantage of such innocent boobs. It’s like taking candy from a baby.”
“It’s no use,” declared Bobby. “Billy is a hopeless case.”
“He sure is,” agreed Mouser, whose faith in ghosts had received a severe bump. “I was watching his face too, but he was so sober that I fell for it and fell good and hard. The only satisfaction is that the rest of you fell for it too.”
Just then Dr. Raymond, the head of the school approached, and the boys subsided. The doctor smiled pleasantly at the group and singled out Bobby.
“I’d like to have you come to my office in a few minutes, Blake,” he said, “and you also Martin and Bangs. I have something to say to you.”
“Very well, sir,” the boys assented.
The doctor passed on, and the boys looked at each other. Usually an invitation to the doctor’s office portended something unpleasant, and was not looked forward to with any degree of enthusiasm.
“Now you’re going to catch it,” chaffed Skeets.
“What have you roughnecks been up to now?” demanded Shiner with mock severity.
“Perhaps he’s going to scold you for falling for my jokes,” Billy rubbed it in.
But the three who had been summoned only smiled. There had been times after midnight spreads and other escapades, when such an invitation would have made them decidedly uneasy. But just at the moment their consciences were clear, and it was without misgiving that a few minutes later they knocked at the doctor’s door and were told to come in.
The doctor was seated at his desk, but rose as they entered and motioned them to seats. He was a tall, rather spare man of middle age, with keen eyes and the face of a scholar, in which could be seen also the experience of a man of affairs. There was an air of natural dignity about him that warned any one that he would be an unsafe man to trifle with. But although he was a strict disciplinarian and the boys stood in wholesome awe of him, he was yet tolerant and broadminded and absolutely just. Any boy that was summoned before him for an alleged offense could be certain of being heard in his own defense, and of getting a “square deal;” and wherever possible, justice would be tempered with mercy.
He had built up a reputation for Rockledge School that was spread far and wide. His instructors were well chosen, the manners and morals of the boys were carefully looked after, and parents had no hesitation in confiding their boys to his keeping. The institution was fortunate in its location, standing on the shores of Monatook Lake, a beautiful body of water, which afforded facilities for bathing, boating and fishing in Summer and for skating and other ice sports in Winter. In addition to these natural advantages, the school had a well-equipped gymnasium and excellently laid out fields for football, baseball and other sports. For training both the mind and the body, Rockledge School left little to be desired; and this was so well understood in that part of the country that there was usually a waiting list of applicants for admission to the strictly limited number of pupils.
“I have sent for you boys,” the doctor said, after they had seated themselves, “to thank you on behalf of myself and the school for the gallant thing you did to-day in saving those boys from drowning in the lake. It took a lot of pluck and hard work, and I’m proud of you.”
The boys looked embarrassed.
“How is Lee Cartier getting along, Dr. Raymond?” asked Bobby eagerly, glad to change the subject. “Mr. Carrier told me that he wasn’t well enough for us to see him.”
The doctor’s face took on a worried look.
“It’s a little early to tell yet,” be replied. “Dr. Evans, who has just gone, told me that the drenching he had received and the exposure afterward while you were getting back to shore had been a severe shock to his system. He comes from the South, you know, and hasn’t been up here long enough to get hardened to our climate. There is a possibility that he may be in for a serious illness. Still, we’ll hope for the best. I won’t keep you any longer,” he said, rising as a signal of dismissal, “but I want once more to say to you that you have done honor to yourselves and the school.”
The boys bowed themselves out and closed the door behind them.
“The doctor’s a brick, isn’t he?” remarked Fred, as they went down the hall.
“You bet he is,” agreed Sparrow. “He’s the real goods.”
“He’s all wool and a yard wide,” was Bobby’s tribute to the head of Rockledge School.
A week passed swiftly by and then another, and by that time Winter had come in earnest. There had as yet been no snow, but the weather had become intensely cold and the lake was beginning to freeze over. At first, the ice looked like a gigantic spider’s web shooting out in shimmering threads until the entire surface was covered with a crystal coating. Then the ice began to thicken at the shores, and it was evident that with the continuance of the cold weather it would soon be possible to skate from one end of the lake to the other.
Skates were gotten out and polished and sharpened. Some of the boys busied themselves with making ice sails, which they could hold in their hands and which would carry them like the wind along the glassy surface without the expenditure of any effort of their own, save what was required to hold the sails. This contrivance had a special appeal to Pee Wee, who was a profound believer in any device that would save labor. He was far too lazy however to make one for himself and had written home asking his folks to buy and send him one. To the other boys’ suggestion that it be especially reinforced or made of sheet iron, he turned a deaf and scornful ear.
But before the ice was quite hard enough to be trusted, the snow took a hand. Up to then there had been nothing but a few flurries that did scarcely more than whiten the ground. But one afternoon, as the boys came out of their last recitations, they saw that the skies were lowering and that a steady snowstorm was in progress.
Ordinarily this would have been welcomed, but just now the boys had their minds set on skating, so that the sight of the whirling flakes was something of a disappointment.
“There goes our skating up the flue,” commented Shiner, as he looked on the ground on which there was already an inch of snow. “The lake will be no good, if it’s all covered with snow.”
“And by the time the snow’s ready to melt, the ice will melt too,” mourned Sparrow.
“And I just got a notice from the express company this morning that my ice sail was there,” complained Pee Wee.
“Oh, stop your grouching, you poor fish,” said Bobby. “In the first place the snow may not amount to anything. In the second place, if it does, we can get busy and sweep off enough of the ice on the lake to skate on. And in the third place, what we may miss in skating we can make up in coasting.”
chanted Skeets. “I guess that means Bobby,” he added, giving the latter a nudge in the ribs.
“Well, what have we got to growl about anyway?” said Fred, falling into his chum’s mood. “Here we are well and strong and able to put away three square meals a day” – here Pee Wee pricked up his ears. “Now if we were shut up in a room like Lee Cartier, we might have something to kick about.”
“Poor Lee!” remarked Bobby regretfully. “He’s certainly had a rough deal. He’s lucky of course that he didn’t get pneumonia. But it’s no joke to be kept in his room so long. I’m going over to see him for a while as soon as supper is over.”
Which he did, accompanied by Fred and Sparrow, who had expressed a desire to go along.
