Читать книгу Bobby Blake on a Plantation: or, Lost in the Great Swamp - Warner Frank A. - Страница 3

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.”