MAROONED!
“Gone!” exclaimed Hugh. “My word! But how――――”
“Cut out the comedy, Jimmy,” said Nick. “Aren’t they there, really?”
“Well, you come and have a look. Maybe your sight is better than mine.
I haven’t my glasses with me and so, of course, I may be mistaken, but
nevertheless and notwithstanding――――”
“Well, I’ll be switched!” muttered Nick, holding a flaring match aloft
in the darkness. “Now how the dickens――――”
“I guess,” offered Dud, “that getting in and out of them to drink
pushed them off.”
“That’s the jolly story,” agreed Hugh. “But they were there the last
time I went down.”
“Who took the last drink?” asked Jimmy.
“You did, didn’t you? Did you see both canoes then?”
Jimmy turned to Nick in the gloom and considered. At last: “I didn’t
notice,” he confessed. “It was pretty dark then――――”
“But I say,” interrupted Hugh, “what are we going to do, eh?”
“Beat it home, ’Ighness,” responded Nick, “if you know what I mean.
There’s no use looking for the pesky things tonight. I dare say,
anyway, they’ll run aground somewhere before they get very far. What
we’ve got to do is foot it back. How far is it, Jimmy?”
“About a mile and a half,” answered Jimmy gloomily, “and most of the
way across this plaguey marsh. Unless we strike across that direction
and find the Yarrow road.”
“That would be worse than looking for the canoes,” said Nick. “Best
thing to do is follow the river as well as we can. Come on!”
“I say, if I fall in you might sing out so I’ll know which way to
swim,” suggested Hugh. “Tomorrow I’m going to buy an anchor for that
canoe, Nick; that is, if I ever find it.”
“Gee!” muttered Jimmy.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nick.
“I was just recalling the interesting fact that the canoe we were in
belongs to young Twining, the little beast, and he will be likely to be
quite peevish if it’s lost.”
“How inconsiderate!” laughed Nick. “He’s a junior, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all right then. You can point out to him that it’s a great
honor for him to have his canoe lost by an upper middler. Besides,
it’ll turn up in the morning. Oh, thunder!”
“I should say so!” agreed Hugh, scrambling out of the ditch he had
followed Nick into. “’Ware water, fellows!”
Dud and Jimmy escaped that time, but during the next half-hour or so
they had their share of misfortunes. There was no moon and the stars
were partly hidden by light clouds and it was impossible to see more
than a pace ahead at any time. They never actually tumbled into the
river, but they frequently stumbled down the bank and only saved
themselves by prompt laying hold of whatever they could reach, as when
Nick, walking too close to the edge and finding himself slipping,
promptly clutched Hugh’s leg and nearly doubled the catastrophe! It
seemed more like an hour than a half-hour since they had left the
willows before they caught sight of the old bridge looming indistinctly
above them. After that the rest was easy, for they had only to break
their way through the bushes that clad the embankment and foot it along
Crumbie Street to the corner of the campus, their path now illumined
by the infrequent street lights. Under the first of them they stopped
to take stock. Every one of them was wet to the knees or above and
plastered here and there with the nice, dark, rich mud of the marshes.
It was almost eight o’clock and any hope they may have entertained of
reaching their various rooms undetected had long since vanished. Nick
sighed philosophically as he turned to continue his journey, his shoes
_squish-squashing_ at every step.
“Anyway,” he said, “when we tell them we lost the canoes and had to
walk home they’ll just have to believe us! That is the one bright spot
in the surrounding gloom.”
“I’ve always wondered,” mused Jimmy, “how it would feel to be on
probation.”
“You ought to know by this time,” chuckled Dud. “You’ve been there
twice already.” For some reason, Dud seemed less troubled by the
impending disaster than the others.
Jimmy sniffed. “I don’t know, Mr. Baker, where you get your information,
but you have been sadly misled. The other occasions to which you
doubtless allude――――”
“Shut up, Jimmy,” warned Nick. “And, say, we’d better part company
about now. You and Baker beat it up here and Hugh and I’ll amble
careless-like over to River Street. I hate to attract attention, I’m
that modest. Nighty-night!”
“Same to you,” replied Jimmy. “And thanks for a pleasant party.
Although I must say that your arrangements for getting us home were a
bit――ah――primitive!”
“Don’t mention it! Farewell, brothers. We meet in prison!”
Whether by design or accident, Mr. Russell’s study door was wide
open as Dud and Jimmy quietly slipped from the stairway well into
the first-floor corridor of Trow, and, although they didn’t think it
advisable to stop to pass the time of day with the instructor, they
stopped just the same.
“Ah, Logan, is that you?” It was “J. P.’s” voice. The two boys retraced
their steps and halted at the doorway.
“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmy brightly.
“And Baker, too, I see. Well, young gentlemen, where have you been? We
missed your bright and smiling faces at supper tonight.”
Mr. Russell seemed to be in a pleasant mood, though one couldn’t always
be certain from appearances, and so Jimmy, as spokesman, smiled his
most winning smile and answered truthfully: “In the mud, sir.”
“Indeed? Yes, I see. All the evidence tends to corroborate your quaint
statement. But why in the mud, Logan?”
Jimmy hesitated an instant and then decided to make a clean breast of
the matter. Mr. Russell heard him through, smiling pleasantly. And
when the tale was told he said: “A most interesting narrative, Logan,
on my word. You show a nice sense of dramatic construction. But really,
boys, I’m rather afraid trouble will come of this. You know there’s a
rule about being in bounds by six o’clock on Sundays, eh? By the way,
you brought your fellow miscreants back with you, I trust? I refer to
Ordway and Blake.”
“Yes, sir; they’re back,” replied Jimmy dispiritedly. Mr. Russell’s
tone now wasn’t so reassuring.
“And they, too, were――ah――in the mud?”
Jimmy grinned. “You’d think so if you saw them! They fell right in a
ditch once!”
“Really?” Mr. Russell smiled quite broadly. “Well, I suppose it’s all a
grand lark with you youngsters, eh? Dear, dear, what a thing it is to
be young! Get those wet things off, boys, and stay in your room for the
rest of the evening. Possibly――――” He caught himself up. Then: “We’ll
hope for the best. Hm! Better look to your ways for awhile, though,
both of you. How about that little matter we spoke of recently, Baker?
Any――ah――any developments?”
“No, sir. I――I quit.”
“Wise youth! Go your ways, young gentlemen. Ponder on your sins
and”――Mr. Russell took up his book again――“refresh your souls with the
sweet communion――――”
The rest was only a mumble. Dud and Jimmy stole noiselessly away.
Fortune was good to them on the morrow. They were assembled, a
sober quartette, in Dr. Duncan’s office after breakfast and gravely
reprimanded and told that only a diligent application to studies could
wipe out the stain of their guilt. Promises of unfaltering labor
being at once forthcoming from each, they were dismissed with a final
admonition to mend their ways and, they thought, a sigh of relief from
the principal, never at his best in the rôle of Stern Authority.
After a ten o’clock recitation, Nick and Jimmy hurried up the river
in Nick’s canoe and recovered the lost craft, Twining’s being found
lodged against the bridge timbers and Hugh’s a half-mile up the stream,
entangled in a sunken branch. That, to all appearances, ended the
affair, but in reality there was one important consequence that was
lost sight of, which was the acceptance of Dud into the circle in which
Nick Blake and Hugh Ordway revolved. It didn’t happen all at once, and
for a week or two Dud himself didn’t realize it, but at the end of that
period he suddenly discovered himself sitting with Hugh and Nick and
Bert Winslow and Ted Trafford in Nick’s room very gravely discussing
such important subjects as The Value of the Sacrifice Hit, Overhand
versus Underhand Pitching, When to Use the Pinch-Play and The Duties
of a Third-Baseman on a Bunt to His Territory with a Man on Second.
Perhaps Dud didn’t take a very large part in the discussion, but when
he had anything to say he found voice to say it, and a few remarks from
him on the subject of underhand pitching were well received. But the
main thing was that he was there, not on sufferance but, as it seemed,
quite naturally and as a matter of course. He surreptitiously pinched
himself, found he was actually awake and then, for a moment, was
visibly embarrassed.
I don’t pretend that either Hugh or Nick would have been broken-hearted
if Dud hadn’t been present that evening, nor shall I attempt to guess
just how much of the friendliness they displayed was due to sympathy.
On the other hand, they were more than willing to have him there, and,
when they thought of it, were at some pains to make him feel welcome.
Ted Trafford took his cue from his host, and Bert Winslow’s attitude
was one of careless toleration. He still looked on Dud with suspicion.
Jimmy Logan couldn’t foist any lemon on him, as he once eloquently put
it to Hugh! Still, he didn’t actually dislike the younger boy, and,
save for an occasional mildly sarcastic comment occasioned by what he
called Dud’s cheek in trying to squirm his way into upper class company
and the first team, he treated the latter decently enough. The evening
ended with ginger-ale and grape-juice, mixed in equal proportions in
a pitcher, the scant remains of a pineapple cheese and some crackers.
Ted Trafford and Dud went back to Trow together, rather silently since
Ted was sleepy and Dud had nothing important to say, and parted in
the corridor. Dud reflected afterwards that Trafford might have said,
“Come and see me some time, Baker,” or something to like effect. But he
didn’t. He merely nodded sleepily, yawned and murmured: “Night!” Dud
was a bit disappointed, and without cause. Ted Trafford, who was a big,
good-hearted senior, would have issued that invitation had it occurred
to him that the younger boy would have set any store by it. As it was,
the thought didn’t enter his mind. If Baker was a friend of Nick and
Hugh, why, that was all there was to it. “Any friend of my friend,” is
the way Ted would have put it.
Followed a week bare of real incident. Dud, like the other members
of that picnic party, applied himself doggedly to his lessons in an
effort to get square with the Office again and turned out each week-day
afternoon for baseball practice. Sometimes he pitched for the scrubs
and more often his work consisted of serving them up to the batters
at the net and, afterwards, being relieved by Kelly or Brunswick,
practicing batting himself. The first game of the season came off that
Wednesday afternoon, with the second team as the opponent. It wasn’t
much of a contest. Errors swelled the score of each team and all sorts
of delays slowed the game up so that there was time for only seven
innings. Dud took no part, the twirling being performed by Ben Myatt
for three innings and by Nate Leddy for the rest of the game. The
second team pitchers were severely handled and the first won by the
decisive score of 17 to 7.
If there was any special sensation in that contest it was in the sudden
eminence of “Hobo” Ordway as a batter. Hugh, going into the line-up in
the fourth inning, came twice to bat and on each occasion smashed a
long, clean two-bagger into left-center. In the field he had only three
chances, but he took them all. It was only in throwing in that Hugh
was weak. Jimmy went to right field for three innings, made one rather
brilliant running catch of a long fly, failed to get a hit and retired
in favor of a pinch hitter in the sixth. After that Wednesday game life
settled down again rather monotonously, but not uninterestingly, for
Dud. On Saturday the team journeyed away and played Portsmouth Grammar
School and won handily against a weak adversary. Dud didn’t accompany
the team as a member nor did he go along with the half-hundred ardent
rooters. Neither did Jimmy. Mr. Russell in refusing their request for
leave, intimated that the afternoon might be spent far more profitably
in study. “J. P.” was kindly but firm. Doubtless his advice was
well-meant and worthy of consideration, but I regret to say it was not
followed. Instead, the two boys went trout fishing in Three Gallon
Brook, a mile back of school. Dud used flies and got not even a nibble.
Jimmy, with a plentiful supply of angle-worms, landed a four-inch
sunfish. As no one, so far as they were aware, had ever caught, seen
or suspected the presence of a trout in Three Gallon Brook, they were
not disappointed. The only feature of the excursion not counted on
occurred when Dud slipped from a rock during the effort to free his
line from a snag and landed in three feet of extremely cold water.
Fortunately that happened after Jimmy had landed his catch and so they
were about ready to go home, anyway. Jimmy carried the sunfish back to
school dangling from an alder branch. That is, it dangled until they
reached the school grounds. Then it was placed tenderly in Jimmy’s
coat pocket and smuggled to Number 19. When he returned from supper he
brought salt, and the fish was fried over the gas――with the door and
transom carefully closed and both windows wide open――and consumed in
a peculiarly flabby and underdone condition. Jimmy partook with gusto,
or pretended to, but Dud did scant justice to the repast. Jimmy said
he was jealous. Gus Weston happened in before the penetrating aroma of
the sunfish had been entirely dissipated and asked anxiously what the
trouble was. Whereupon Jimmy stopped trying to dislodge a bone that had
worked its way in back of his tongue and described movingly the size,
ferocious aspect and fighting qualities of that fish, recounting with
much detail the long, exhausting struggle incident to its capture. And
Weston diplomatically vowed that he believed every word of it; and had
either of them a rattling good detective story to lend him?