Chapter XXVIII: A Friend in Need

It was early on the next day that Bessie received a message from her father for the whole club:

"Look for me in a few hours. Shall run up to see what Wyn has
done as soon as I can get away. If it is all right, you shall
have new boat this season.--Henry Lavine."

A man brought it over from the Forge. The girls were delighted with the news. A guard had been set over the spot where the sunken boat lay and Dr. Shelton and Mr. Jarley were making arrangements to have a derrick barge towed up to Gannet Island, so that the old _Bright Eyes_ could be brought to the surface quickly.

Naturally the Busters were too much interested in these proceedings to come over to Green Knoll Camp; and the girls had had so much excitement and exercise of late that they were inclined to take matters quietly for the time being.

Therefore, there was not a canoe on the lake when a fussy, smoky little motor boat, late in the afternoon, came into the lake from the Wintinooski and puffed out into deep water, evidently bound for either the Island or Green Knoll Camp.

The deep cove, at the head of which the little red and yellow cottage of the Jarleys was set, was like a big bay in the contour of the lake shore. It was out here in this deep water that Wyn Mallory and Bess Lavine had been swamped by the squall. From the docks at the Forge to the point east of Green Knoll, where the girls' camp was situated, was all of eight miles. When this little motor boat had sputtered along until she was about half way between those two points, she suddenly stopped.

The girls had been lazily on the lookout for Mr. Lavine's appearance and earlier in the day had kept the camp spyglass busy. Now Frank suddenly caught it up again and focused it almost at once on the stalled motor boat.

"Oh! what's that?" was her excited demand. "Girls! there's a boat we missed before."

"Where?" drawled Grace, lazily.

"It isn't father; is it?" demanded Bess.

"How do I know? It's a power boat----Goodness, what's that?"

She jumped so that Wyn came to her side quickly. "Let me see, Frank," she begged.

"There's--there's a fire!" gasped Frankie.

The girls came running at her cry. Even Mrs. Havel left her seat and stepped out of the shade of the beech tree to scan the water under her hand.

"I see smoke!" cried Percy.

"Dear me! is the boat really afire?" demanded Mina Everett.

"Of course, it can't be father," declared Bess. "He knows how to take care of a motor boat."

Through the glass Wyn, who now had it, saw the flames leaping from under the hood of the boat, while a dense plume of smoke began to reel away on the breeze that was blowing.

"It is afire!" she gasped "Oh! it _is_! What can we do?"

"We could never reach it in our canoes before the boat burns to the water's edge," cried Frankie.

They could see two figures on the doomed boat. Through the glass Wyn could see them so plainly that she knew one to be a waterman, while the other was much better dressed. Indeed, she feared that she recognized the figure of this second man.

"Let me have the glass, Wyn," said Bessie, eagerly.

But Wyn, for once, was disobliging. "You can't see anything--much," she said. "Come on, Bess! let's try and paddle out to them."

"And have them swamp our canoes if they tried to climb in," said Miss Lavine. "No, thanks!"

"Come on!" cried Frank, joining in. "We ought to try and help."

"What's the use?" drawled Bessie, walking away. "And you're mean not to let me have the glass, Wyn."

"Oh, come on and take it!" gasped Wyn.

"Don't want it now," snapped Bess, who took offense rather easily at times. "You can keep the old thing."

Wyn sighed with relief. Then she whirled quickly and ran down to the beach, with Frank right at her heels. They were the only two girls who launched their canoes. Wyn had brought the glass with her.

"Now I _know_ Bess won't see him," she exclaimed, almost in a whisper.

"What's that?" demanded Frankie, who overheard. "What do you mean, Wyn?"

"I believe that is Mr. Lavine out there," said the captain of the Go-Aheads. "Oh, Frank! paddle hard!"

And it _was_ Mr. Lavine. He had hired this little gasoline boat, with its owner to run it, at Denton, and had paid the owner an extra five-dollar bill to force the boat to its very highest speed (and that wasn't much) all the way up the Wintinooski. Mr. Lavine was in a hurry; he was in too much of a hurry, as it proved.

Somewhere off Meade's Forge he began to smell the gasoline all too strongly. There was a leak somewhere; but the boat kept on.

Finally even the reckless driver grew frightened and shut off the spark.

"There's a leak, boss," he drawled. "Sure as aigs is aigs!"

Mr. Lavine tore up one of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. A man with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilge in the cockpit.

"Leak!" he exclaimed, wrathfully. "I should say you had been using the boat's bottom for a gasoline tank. Why! we might have been blown up a dozen times."

"I expect the leak's in the feed pipe," confessed the boatman. "But I thought I'd got her fixed las' week."

"You've got _us_ fixed," snapped Mr. Lavine. "'Way out here in the middle of Lake Honotonka, too--and I in a hurry."

"Wal," said the man, "I'll putty up the leak and you see if you kin swab out the boat. I wouldn't dare try and ignite her again with so much gasoline around."

"I--should--say--not!" gasped the gentleman, and removed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and his trousers, and set to work.

They both labored like beavers for half an hour and then the boatman did the very silliest thing one can imagine. He had worked hard and, being a man addicted to tobacco, he felt the need of a smoke.

He pulled out his pipe, filled it, unnoticed by Mr. Lavine, who was still trying to swab out the last of the bilge and gasoline, and scratched a match. He was directly in front of the hood of the boat when he did it. The next moment there was a flash, a roar, and the man was flung the length of the boat, against Mr. Lavine in the stern, and the two almost went overboard.

The foolish smoker lost his mustache, eyebrows, and lashes, and a lot of his front hair. He was scorched quite severely, too; but the peril which menaced them with the front of the boat in flames drove the thought of his burns from the fellow's mind.

"And I can't swim a stroke, boss!" he cried.

"You have nothing on me there," declared Mr. Lavine. "I have never been able to master more than the first few motions in the art of swimming."

But the flames were springing higher and they had nothing with which to throw water on the fire. The man had not even a bailing tin in his moribund old craft. Mr. Lavine had been using a swab and was covered with grease and dirty water.

This became a small thing, however--and that within a very few minutes. The boat was doomed and both knew it.

Mr. Lavine tried to tear up more of the grating under foot so as to make something that would float and upon which they might bear themselves up in the water. But the boards were too thin.

Then he tried to unship the rudder (the singed boatman was no use at all in this emergency) and so make use of that as a float. But the bolts were rusted and the boat had begun to swing around so that the fire blew right into the stern.

They both had to leap overboard.

It was a serious situation indeed. By Mr. Lavine's advice they paddled toward the bow, one on either side of the boat, for the flames were rushing aft.

The bow was a mere shell, however. The flames had already almost consumed it, and soon the fire fairly ate through the bows at the water level. The water rushed in and so sank the boat by the head.

Not that the boat went straight down. The stern rose in the water and the two men, in their desperate strait, gazed at the flames above their heads.

Had it been night the fire would have been like a great torch in the middle of the lake--and it would have brought help from all directions. As it was, the black smoke first thrown off, and then the steam, attracted more than the girls of Green Knoll Camp to the scene.

At the landing Mr. Jarley was splicing some heavy rope which he expected to use the next day when the sunken _Bright Eyes_ would be actually raised. Polly saw the smoke first from the cottage and ran out to tell him.

"One of those motor boats is afire, Father!" she cried. Instantly the boatman set about going to the rescue. It was a fair day, but there was a good breeze blowing. Jarley took the _Coquette_.

He had no idea to whom he was playing the friend in need when he sailed the catboat down upon the scene of the disaster. It was a chance to help two fellow beings and the boatman cared not who they were.

Of course the sailing craft beat out the two frantically paddling girls from Green Knoll Camp. Yet it was still a long way from the spot when the last of the burning boat seemed to sink completely and the flames were snuffed out by the waters of the lake.