Chapter XXIII: Wyn Hits Something

In the midst of the storm a voice hailed them from outside. Dave went to the doorway and saw--through the falling rain--Farmer Prosser, standing by his horses' heads. He had just brought his family home from the picnic and they had scurried into the house.

"What are you doing in there?" demanded the farmer. "Can't you stop the sails?"

Dave explained, making it as light for Ferd as possible.

"Well! I've been expecting something like this ever since the mill was put up. We can't do anything about it now. But I believe the wind will shift soon. And if it does, perhaps I can stop the sails from outside here."

It was nearly dark, however, and quite supper-time, before the farmer's prophecy came true. Then the rain suddenly ceased to fall (the thunder and lightning had long since rolled away into the distance) and the wind dropped.

The farmer and his man rigged a brake to fall against the narrow breadth of shaft which extended outside of the mill wall, and so brought pressure to bear upon the revolving axle. This helped bring the sails to a stop.

How thankfully the Go-Aheads and the Busters got out of that tower, it would be difficult to express. Professor Skillings had started up through the rain to see what he could do; but on the way he had picked up a white pebble washed out of the roadside by the rain, and there being something peculiar about it, he stopped under a hedge to examine it by the light of his pocket lamp. Then he must needs proceed with his ever-present geological hammer to break the stone in two. Long after dark his electric lamp was flashing down there on the hillside like some huge wavering firefly.

Not that he could have done a thing to help his young friends. Mrs. Prosser, the farmer's wife, had the most practical idea of anybody; for, the minute the boys and girls were out of the mill, she insisted that they troop into the farmhouse kitchen and there sit down to her long table and "get outside of" great bowls of milk and bread, with a host of ginger cookies on the side.

So the incident ended happily after all, though Ferdinand Roberts's spirits drooped for several days. It was well for him to suffer in spirit--as Frankie said: it might teach him a lesson. And he had to pay the farmer for the damage he had done to the machinery.

Ferdinand never had any money. He spent his allowance in advance, borrowing of the other Busters whenever he could. When he got money from home he had to sit down and apportion it all out to his creditors, and then had to begin borrowing again.

He had hard work scraping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser; but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped--only Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd's mind that it was not honorable to borrow from a girl.

However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to the snapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple of days afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought he wanted.

"Oh, Tubby!" he cried. "Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must have that."

Tubby looked at him out of heavy-lidded eyes, and croaked: "Snow again, brother; I don't get your drift!"

When Ferd went from one to the other of his mates they all refused--if not quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually a pauper, with all lines of credit shut to him. It made him serious.

"If all you fellows, and the old prof., should suddenly die on me up here--what would I do?" gasped Ferd. "Why--I'd have to walk home!"

"Or swim," said Dave, heartlessly. "You'd pawn your canoe, I s'pose."

Speaking of swimming, that was an art in which several of the boys, as well as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside the early morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either at Green Knoll Camp, or off the boys' camp on Gannet Island.

The boys built a good diving raft and anchored it in deep water after much hard work. The good swimmers among the girls--especially Wyn and Grace--liked to paddle over to the raft and dive from it.

Late in the afternoon the Go-Aheads had come to the raft in their canoes dressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had gone off on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not in sight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.

"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. "Now we can have a good time without those trifling boys bothering us. I'm going to learn to dive properly, Wyn."

"Sure," returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. "Now's the time," and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.

The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vast enjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat upon the edge of the float to rest.

Wyn dived overboard.

She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under the surface she turned and went deeper. She was like an otter in the water, and having stuffed her ears with cotton she felt prepared to remain below a long time.

Once she had opened her eyes while diving with Bess, and she thought she saw a shadowy something on the bottom of the lake that was neither a boulder nor a waterlogged snag.

She beat her way to the bottom as rapidly as possible; but the light did not follow her. She could see nothing when she opened her eyes. It seemed as though something overshadowed her.

The water was tugging at her; she could not remain below for long. But as she turned to drift up again, her shoulder touched something. She struck out and reached it. But the blow really pushed her away and she floated upward toward the surface.

When she paddled to the raft she was panting, and Frank demanded:

"What's the matter, Wyn? You look as if you'd seen a ghost I believe you stay down too long."

"No," gasped Wyn. "I--I hit something."

"What was it?"

"Why--why, it looked like a wagon. 'Twas something."

"I suppose so!" laughed Frank. "Wagon with a load of hay on it--eh?"

Wyn said nothing more. She sat upon the float, with her knees drawn up and hugged in her brown arms, and thought. The other girls could get nothing out of her.

She wasn't dreaming, however. She was thinking to a serious purpose.

It _had_ looked like a wagon--as much as it looked like anything else. But, of course, she had seen it very dimly. She knew by the touch that it was of wood; but it was no waterlogged tree, although there was slime upon it It was not rough; but smooth.

Of course, it wasn't a wagon. Nor was it a huge box. Neither wagon nor box could have got out here, fifteen or twenty rods off Gannet Island.

Wyn glanced over toward the island and saw that she could look right into the cove where John Jarley had met with his accident. According to the boatman's story, as he went overboard from the motor boat he gave the wheel a twist that should have shot her directly out of the cove toward the middle of the lake.

"But suppose the boat didn't respond, after all, to the twist of the wheel?" Wyn was thinking. "Or, suppose the slant of the rudder was not as great as he supposed?"

She fixed in her mind about the spot where the thing lay she had hit, and then glanced back to the tree on the bank of the cove, that showed the long scar where the branch was torn off.

The line between the two was clear. The motor boat might have run out exactly on that course and missed the wooded point which guarded the entrance to the cove.

Suppose the thing she had hit when she dived was the _Bright Eyes_, Dr. Shelton's lost motor boat?

Wyn was about to shout to the other girls--to call them around her to divulge the idea that had come into her mind--when a hail from the water announced the return of the Busters.

She remembered Mr. Lavine's promise. The two clubs were rivals in this matter. Wouldn't it be a fine thing for the Go-Aheads to own a motor boat all by themselves!

Wyn got up and dived again. But she did not dive toward the mysterious something that she had previously found. She swam stoutly instead to meet the coming Busters.