Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club

Amid much laughter and chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry–and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, “the deponent knoweth not,” as Frank Cameron put it.

Then Tubby got his banjo, Dumont his mandolin, Dave his ocarina, and they sang, and played, and told jokes, until a silver crescent moon rising over the lake warned them that the hour was growing late. The feminine visitors then boarded the Happy Day and under the escort of Dave and Ferdinand to work the boat, the girls and their chaperone made the run back to Green Knoll Camp, giving the cove where Polly Jarley had caught the perch a wide berth.

Dave insisted upon going ashore at Green Knoll and searching the camp “for possible burglars,” as he laughingly said.

“Do, do look under my bed, Dave!” squealed Frank, in mock distraction. “I’ve always expected to find a man under my bed.”

“But it was real nice of him, just the same,” admitted Mina Everett, when the Happy Day had chugged away. “I feel a whole lot better now that he has beaten up the camp.”

On the next morning Grace and Percy were not allowed to lag over the breakfast dishes till all hours.

“This shall be no lazy girls’ camp,” declared Mrs. Havel. “The quicker you all get your tasks done, the better. Then you can have games, and go fishing, and otherwise enjoy yourselves.”

The fish-fry they had enjoyed at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp the evening before had given them all an appetite for more, and as Polly Jarley appeared early, according to promise, Wyn began to bustle around and hunt out the fishing tackle.

There probably wasn’t a girl in the crowd who was afraid to put a worm on a hook, save Mina. She owned up to the fact that they made her “squirmy” and she hated to see live bait on a hook.

“But that’s what we have to use for lake fish–or river fish, either,” Wyn told her. “You’re not going to be much good to this fishing party.”

“I know it, Wynnie. And I sha’n’t go,” said the timid one. “Mrs. Havel is not going fishing, and I can stay with her.”

“You’ll have company,” snapped Bessie Lavine. “I’m sure I’m not going,” and she said it with such a significant look at Polly Jarley, who had come ashore, that the boatman’s daughter, as well as the other girls, could not fail to understand why she made the declaration.

“Why, Bess Lavine!” exclaimed Frankie, the outspoken.

Polly’s face had flushed deeply, then paled. Bess had avoided her before; but now she had come out openly with her animosity.

“Is your name Miss Lavine?” asked the boatman’s daughter, her voice quivering with emotion.

“What if it is?” snapped Bess.

“Then I guess I know why you speak to me so – ”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Miss! I don’t care to speak to you,” said Bess.

“Nor do I care to have anything to do with you,” said Polly, plucking up a little spirit herself under this provocation. “You are Henry Lavine’s daughter. I am not surprised at your speech and actions. He has done all he could to hurt my father’s reputation for years–and you seem to be just like him.”

“Hurt your father’s reputation–Bosh!” cried Bess. “You can’t spoil a – ”

But here Wyn Mallory came to the rescue.

“Stop, Bess! Don’t you pay any attention to what she says, Polly. If this quarrel goes on, Bess, I shall tell Mrs. Havel immediately. You come with us, Polly; if Bessie doesn’t wish to go fishing, she can remain at camp. Come, girls!”

Bess and Mina remained behind.

“I told you how ’twould be, Miss Wyn,” said Polly, her eyes bright and hard and the angry flush in her cheek making her handsomer than ever. “I shall only make trouble among your friends.”

“You don’t notice any of the rest of us running up the red flag; do you?” interposed Frank Cameron. “Bess’s crazy.”

“The Lavines have been our worst enemies–worse than Dr. Shelton,” said Polly, with half a sob. “Mr. Lavine is up here at the lake in the spring and fall, usually, and he will always talk to anybody who will listen about his old trouble with father. And he is an influential man.”

“Don’t you cry a tear about it!” exclaimed Frank, wiping her own eyes angrily.

Wyn had put a comforting arm over the shoulder of the boatman’s daughter. “We’ll just forget it, my dear,” she said, gently.

But it was not so easy to forget–not so easy for Polly, at least, although the other girls treated her as nicely as they could. Her face remained sad, and she could not respond to their quips and sallies as the fleet of four canoes and Polly’s skiff got under weigh.

Polly pulled strongly along the shore in her light craft; but of course the canoes could have left her far behind had the girls so wished. Their guide warned them finally against loud talking and splashing, and soon they came to a quiet cove where the trees stood thickly along the lake shore, and the water was not much ruffled by the morning breeze.

Polly had brought the right kind of bait for perch, and most of the girls of the Go-Ahead Club had no difficulty in arranging their rods and lines and casting for the hungry fish. Perch, “shiners,” roaches, and an occasional “bullhead” began to come into the canoes. These latter scared some of the girls; but they were better eating than any of the other fish and both Wyn and Frank, as well as Polly, knew how to take them off the hook without getting “horned.”

Polly did not remain with them more than an hour. She was sure the girls would get all the fish they would want right at this spot, and so, excusing herself, she rowed back to the landing.

“It’s a shame!” exclaimed Frank, the minute she was out of hearing. “I don’t see what possesses Bess to be so mean.”

“I am sorry,” rejoined Wyn. “Polly will not come to the camp again–I can see that.”

“A shame!” cried Percy. “And she seems such a nice girl.”

“Bessie ought to be strapped!” declared Frank.

“I am sure Polly seems just as good as we are,” Grace remarked. “I don’t see why Bess has to make herself so objectionable.”

“She should be punished for it,” declared Percy.

“Turn the tables on her,” suggested Frank. “If she will not have anything to do with Polly, let’s give her the cold shoulder.”

“No,” said Wyn, firmly. “That would be adding fuel to the flames–and would be unfair to Bess.”

“Well, Bess is unfair to your Polly Jolly,” said Frankie.

“Two wrongs never yet made a right,” said the captain of the Go-Ahead Club.

“Well!”

“Bessie is a member of our club. She has greater rights at Green Knoll Camp than Polly. It is true Polly will not come again, unless Bessie is more friendly. The thing, then is to convince Bess that she is wrong.”

“Well!” exclaimed Frank again. “I’d like to see you do it.”

“I hope you will see me,” returned Wyn, placidly. “Or, at least, I hope you will see Bessie’s mind changed, whether by my efforts, or not. Oh, dear! it’s so much easier to get along pleasantly in this world if folks only thought so. Query: Why is a grouch?”

Percy suddenly uttered a yell and almost plunged out of her canoe. She had whipped in her line and there was a small eel on the hook.

It is really wonderful what an excited eel can do in a canoe with a girl as his partner in crime! Mr. Eel tangled up Percy’s line in the first place until it seemed as though somebody must have been playing cat’s cradle with it.

Percy shrieked and finally bethought her to throw the whole thing overboard–tangled line, rod, and Mr. Eel. In his native element, the slippery chap in some mysterious way got off the hook; but the linen line was a mess, and that stopped the fishing for that morning.

They had a nice string, however, and when the odor of the frying fish on the outdoor fire began to spread about Green Knoll Camp, Frank declared:

“The angels flying overhead must stop to sniff–that smell is so heavenly!”

“Nonsense, child!” returned Grace. “That thing you see ’way up there isn’t an angel. It’s a fish-hawk.”

There were letters to take to the Forge that afternoon, and the girls all expected mail, too. But after the fishing bout, and the heavy dinner they ate, not many of the Go-Aheads cared to paddle to town.

“The duty devolves on your captain,” announced Wyn, good-naturedly. “Of course, if anybody else wants to go along – ”

“Don’t all speak at once,” yawned Frank, and rolled over in the shade of the beech.

“It’s a shame! I’ll go with you,” said Bessie Lavine, getting up with alacrity.

“All right, Bess,” said Wyn, cheerfully. “I am glad to have you go.”

The other girls had been a little distant to Bess since their return from the fishing trip; but not Wyn. She had given no sign that she was annoyed by Bessie’s demeanor towards Polly Jarley.

Nor did she “preach” while she and Bess paddled to the Forge. That was not Wynifred Mallory’s way. She knew that, in this case, taking Bess to task for her treatment of Polly would do only harm.

Bess had probably offered to come with Wyn for the special purpose of finding opportunity to argue the case with the captain of the club. But Wyn gave her no opening.

The girls got to the Forge, did their errands, and started back in the canoes. Not until they got well out into the lake did they notice that there were angry clouds in the northwest. And very soon the sun became overcast, while the wind whipped down upon them sharply.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Bess. “Had we better turn back, Wyn?”

“We’re about as far from the Forge as we are from Green Knoll Camp,” declared the other girl.

“Then let’s run ashore – ”

But they had struck right out into the lake from the landing, and it was a long way to land–even to the nearest point. While they were discussing the advisability of changing their course, there came a lull in the wind.

“Maybe we’ll get home all right!” cried Bess, and the two bent to their paddles again, driving the canoes toward distant Green Knoll.

And almost at once–her words had scarcely passed–the wind whipped down upon them from a different direction. The surface of the lake was agitated angrily, and in a minute the two girls were in the midst of a whirlpool of jumping waves.

In ordinary water the canoes were safe enough. But when Bess tried to paddle, a wave caught the blade and whirled the canoe around. She was up-set before she could scream.

And in striving to drive her own craft to her friend’s assistance, Wyn Mallory was caught likewise in a flaw, and she, too, plunged into the lake, while both canoes floated bottom upward.

CHAPTER XIII

A SERIOUS ADVENTURE

Wyn Mallory was a pretty cool-headed girl; nor was this the first time she had been in an accident of this nature.

Naturally, in learning to handle the light cedar craft as expertly as they did, the members of the Go-Ahead Club had much experience. While the weather was good the girls plied their paddles up and down the Wintinooski, but seldom was the river as rough as this open lake in which Wyn and Bessie Lavine had been so unexpectedly overturned.

“Oh! am I not the unluckiest girl that–that ever happened?” wailed Bess, when she came up puffing.

“N-o-no more than I, Bess,” stammered Wyn.

“Get your canoe, Wyn!” cried Bess.

“Oh, yes; but we can’t turn them over in this sea. Oh! isn’t that horrid!” as another miniature wave slapped the captain of the club in the face and rolled her companion completely over.

Bess lost her grip on her canoe. The latter floated beyond her reach while Wyn was striving to get her friend to the surface again.

“Why! we’re going to be drowned!” shrieked Bess, suddenly horror-stricken.

“Don’t you dare lose your nerve,” commanded Wynifred. “If we lose courage we certainly will be lost.”

“Oh, but, Wyn – ”

“Oh, but, Bess! Don’t you dare. Here! get hold of the keel of my canoe.”

“But it won’t bear us both up,” groaned Bessie Lavine.

“It’s got to,” declared Wyn. “Have courage; don’t be afraid.”

“You needn’t try to tell me you’re not afraid yourself, Wyn Mallory!” chattered her friend.

“Of course I am, dear; but I mean, don’t lose your head because you are afraid,” said Wyn. “Come, now! Paddle with one hand and cling to the keel with the other. I’ll do the same.”

“Oh, dear, me! if we were only not so far from the shore,” groaned Bess.

“Somebody may see us and come to our help,” said Wyn, with more confidence in her tone than she really felt.

“The canoes couldn’t live in this gale.”

“It’s only a squall.”

“That’s all very well; but they wouldn’t dare to start out for us from Green Knoll.”

“But the boys – ”

“Their camp isn’t in sight of this place, Wyn,” moaned Bess. “Oh! we will be drowned.”

But Wyn had another hope. She remembered, just before the overturn, that she had caught a glimpse of the red and yellow cottage behind Jarley’s Landing.

“Oh, Bess!” she gasped. “Perhaps Mr. Jarley will see us. Perhaps Polly – ”

Another slapping wave came and rolled them and the canoe over. The frail craft came keel up, level full of water. The least weight upon it now would send it to the bottom of the lake.

“Oh, oh!” shrieked Bess, when she found her voice. “What shall we do now?”

They could both swim; but the lake was rough. The sudden and spiteful squall had torn up the surface for many yards around. Yet, as they rose upon one of the waves, they saw the sun shining boldly in the westward. The squall was scurrying away.

“Come on! we’ve got to swim,” urged Wyn.

“That’s so hard,” wailed Bess, but striking out, nevertheless, in the way she had been so well taught by the instructor in Denton. All these girls had been trained in the public school baths.

“There’s the other canoe,” said Wyn, hopefully.

“But we–we don’t want to go that way,” gasped Bess. “It’s away from land.”

Now Wyn knew very well that they had scarcely a chance of swimming to the distant shore. In ordinarily calm weather–yes; but in this rough sea, and hampered as they were by their bloomers and other clothing–no.

The two girls swam close together, but Wyn dared not offer her comrade help. She wanted to, but she feared that if she did so Bess would break down and become helpless entirely; and Wyn hoped they would get much farther inshore before that happened.

The squall had quite gone over and the sun began to shine. It seemed a cruel thing–to drown out there in the sunlight. And yet the buffeting little waves, kicked up by the wind-flaw, were so hard to swim through.

Had the waves been of a really serious size the struggle would have been less difficult for the two girls. They could have ridden over the big waves and managed to keep their heads above water; but every once in a while a cross wavelet would slap their faces, and every time one did so Bess managed to get a mouthful of water.

“Oh! what will papa do?” moaned Bess.

And Wyn knew what the poor girl meant. She was her father’s close companion and chum. The other girls in the Lavine family were smaller and their mother was devoted to them; but Bess and Mr. Lavine were pals all the time.

Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree.

Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore.

Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her–bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away.

Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril.

And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them?

In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue.

CHAPTER XIV

THE REPULSE

As the squall threatened in the northwest, it had been observed by many on the shores of Lake Honotonka–and many on the lake itself, as well. Sailing craft had run for havens. The lake could be nasty at times and there might be more than a capful of wind in the black cloud that spread so quickly over a sky that had–an hour before–been of azure.

Had the two girls from Green Knoll Camp been observed by the watermen as they embarked in their canoes at Meade’s Forge, they might have been warned against venturing far from the shore in those cockleshells. But Wynifred and Bessie had not been observed, so were not warned.

The squall had come down so quickly that they were not much to be blamed. It had startled other people on the lake–and those much more used to its vagaries.

In a cove on the north shore a small cat-rigged boat had been drifting since noon-time, its single occupant having found the fishing very good. This fisher was the boatman’s daughter, Polly Jarley.

She had now a splendid catch and she knew that, if the wind held true, a sharp run to the westward would bring her to Braisely Park. At some one of the private landings there her fish would be welcomed–she could get more for them than she could at the Forge, which was nearer.

But the squall gathered so fast that she had to put aside the thought of the run down the lake. The wind would switch about, too, after the squall. That was a foregone conclusion.

She waited until the blow was past and then saw that it would be quite impossible to make the park that afternoon and return to the landing in time for tea. And if she was later her father would be worried.

Mr. Jarley did not like to have his girl go out this way and work all day; but there seemed nothing else to be done this summer. They owed so much at the stores at the Forge; and the principal and interest on the chattel mortgage must be found before New Year or they would lose their fleet of boats. And as yet few campers had come to the lake who wished to hire Mr. Jarley’s boats.

So by fishing (and none of the old fellows who had fished Honotonka for years was wiser about the good fishing places than Polly) the girl added from one to two dollars every favorable day to the family income. Sometimes she was off by light in one boat or another; but she did not often come to this northern side of the lake. This cove was at least ten miles from home.

As the last breath of the squall passed, the wind veered as she had expected, and Polly, having reeled in her two lines and unjointed the bamboo poles, stowed everything neatly, raised the anchor, or kedge, and set a hand’s breadth of the big sail.

The canvas filled, and with the sheet in one hand and the other on the arm of the tiller, the girl steered the catboat out of the cove and into the rumpus kicked up by the passing squall.

The girls of the Go-Ahead Club would surely have been frightened had they been aboard the little Coquette, as the catboat was named. She rocked and jumped, and the spume flew over her gunwale in an intermittent shower. But in this sea, which so easily swamped the canoes, the catboat was as safe as a house.

Polly was used to much rougher weather than this. In the summer Lake Honotonka was on its best behavior. At other seasons the tempests tore down from the north and west and sometimes made the lake so terrible in appearance that even the hardiest bateau man in those parts would not risk himself in a boat.

Polly knew, however, that the worst of the squall was over. The lake would gradually subside to its former calm. And the change in the wind was favorable now to a quick passage either to the Forge or to her father’s tiny landing.

“Can’t get any fancy price for the fish at Meade’s,” thought Polly. “I have a good mind to put them in our trap and try again for Braisely Park to-morrow morning.”

As she spoke she was running outside the horns of the cove. She could get a clear sweep now of the lake–as far as it could be viewed from the low eminence of the boat–and she rose up to see it.

“Nobody out but I,” she thought. “Ah! all those folk at the end of the lake ran in when the squall appeared. And the girls and boys over yonder – ”

She was peering now across the lake ahead of the Coquette’s nose, toward the little island where was Cave-in-the-Wood Camp, and at Green Knoll Camp, where the girls from Denton were staying.

Her face fell as she focused her gaze upon the bit of high, green bank on which the sun was now shining again so brilliantly. She remembered how badly she had been treated by Bess Lavine only that morning.

“I can’t go over there any more,” she muttered. “That girl will never forget–or let the others forget–that father has been accused of being a thief. It’s a shame! A hateful shame! And we’re every bit as good as she is – ”

Her gaze dropped to the tumbling wavelets between her and the distant green hillock. She was about to resume her seat and catch the tiller, which she had held steady with her knee.

But now her breath left her and for a moment she stood motionless–only giving to the plunge and jump of the Coquette through the choppy waves.

“Ah!” she exclaimed again, after a little intake of breath.

There were two round objects rising and falling in the rough water–and far ahead. They looked like cocoanuts.

But a little to one side was a long, black something–a stick of timber drifting on the current? No! An overturned boat.

There was no mistaking the cocoanut-like objects. They were human heads. Two capsized people were struggling in the lake.

Polly, in thirty seconds, was keenly alive to what she must do. There was no time lost in bewailing the catastrophe, or wondering about the identity of the castaways.

Who or whatever they were they must be saved. There was not another boat on the lake. And the swimmers were too far from land to be observed under any conditions.

The wind was strong and steady. The wavelets were still choppy, but Polly Jarley never thought of a wetting.

Up went the sail–up, up, up until the unhelmed catboat lay over almost on beam ends. The girl took a sailor’s turn of the sheet around the cleat and then swung all her weight against the tiller, to bring the boat’s head up. She held the sheet ready to let go if a warning creak from the mast should sound, or the boat refuse to respond.

But in half a minute the Coquette righted. It had been a perilous chance–she might have torn the stick out. The immediate peril was past, however. The great canvas filled. Away shot the sprightly Coquette with the wind–a bone in her teeth.

Now and then she dipped and the spume flew high, drenching Polly. The boatman’s daughter was not dressed for this rough work, for she was hatless and wore merely a blouse and old skirt for outside garments. She had pulled off her shoes and stockings while she fished and had not had time to put them on again.

So the flying spray wet her through. She dodged occasionally to protect her eyes from the spoondrift which slatted so sharply across the deck and into the cockpit. The water gathered in the bottom of the old boat and was soon ankle-deep.

But Polly knew the craft was tight and that this water could be bailed out again when she had time. Just now her mind and gaze were fixed mainly upon the round, bobbing objects ahead.

For some minutes, although the catboat was traveling about as fast as Polly had ever sailed, save in a power boat, the girl could not be sure whether the swamped voyagers were girls or boys. It might be two of the Busters, from Gannet Island, for all she knew. She had made up her mind that the victims of the accident were from one camp or the other. There were no other campers as yet on the shore at this end of the lake.

Then Polly realized that the heads belonged to girls. She could see the braids floating out behind. And she knew that they were fighting for their lives.

They swam near together; once one of them raised up breast high in the water, as though looking shoreward. But neither turned back to see if help was coming from behind.