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.”