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

With both hands engaged with sheet and tiller Polly could not make a megaphone to carry her voice; but several times she shouted as loud as she could:

“Ahoy! Hold on! I’m coming!”

Her voice seemed flung right back into her face–drowned by the slatting spray. How viciously that water stung!

The Coquette was traveling at racing speed; but would she be in time?

How long could those two girls bear up in the choppy sea?

One of the heads suddenly disappeared. Polly shrieked; but she could do nothing to aid.

The spray filled her eyes again and, when she had shaken them free, Polly saw that the other swimmer–the stronger one–had gotten her comrade above the surface once more.

Indeed, this one was swimming on her back and holding up the girl who had gone under. How brave she was!

The sun shone clear upon the two in the water and Polly recognized Wynifred Mallory.

“Wyn! Wynnie! Hold to her! Hold up!” cried the boatman’s daughter. “I’ll help you!”

But she was still so far away–it seemed as though the catboat never would come within hailing distance. But before she turned over in the water to swim with Bessie’s hand upon her shoulder, the captain of the Go-Ahead Club beheld the catboat rushing down upon them.

She could only wave a beckoning hand. She could not cry out. Wyn was well-nigh breathless, and Bessie’s only hope was in her. The captain of the canoe club had to save her strength.

Down swooped the catboat. Polly was shouting madly; but not for an instant did she lose control of the boat or ignore the work she had in hand. She wanted to encourage Wyn and the other; but she was taking no chances.

Suddenly she let the sheet run and loosed the halliards. The canvas fluttered down on the deck with a rustle and crash. The catboat sprang to even keel, but shot on under the momentum it had gained in swooping down upon the swamped girls.

“Wyn! hold hard! I’ve got you!”

But it was the other girl Polly grasped. Wyn had turned, thrust the half-drowned Bessie before her, and Polly, leaning over the gunwale of the tossing boat, seized her by the shoulders.

In a moment she heaved up, struggled, dragged the other girl forward, and together rescuer and rescued tumbled flat into the cockpit of the Coquette.

Polly shouted again:

“Wyn! Wyn! I’ll come back for you – ”

“Give me a hand!” cried Wyn, hanging to the rudder. “Polly! you old darling! If you hadn’t got here when you did – ”

Polly left Bess to her own resources and rushed to the stern. She helped Wyn clamber into the boat. Then she hoisted the sail again, and got way upon the boat. She raised the canvas only a little, for she had risked all the weight she dared upon the mast before.

“Are you all right, Bess?” cried Wyn.

“I–I’m alive. But, oh! I’m so–so sick,” gasped Miss Lavine.

“Brace up, Bess! We’re all right now. Polly has saved us.”

“Polly?” cried Bess, sitting up, the better to see the boatman’s daughter as the latter sat again at the helm. “Oh, Polly!”

“You’d better both lie down till we get to the camp. I’ll take you right there,” said the other girl, briefly.

“We’d have been–been drowned, Wyn!” gasped Bess.

“I guess we would. We are still a long way from shore.”

“And Polly saved us? All alone? How wonderful!”

But Polly’s face was stern. She scarcely spoke to the two Denton girls as the Coquette swept across the lake. Wyn told her just how it all happened and the condition of the two canoes when they lost sight of them.

“I saw one; maybe the other can be found,” Polly said. “I’ll speak to father and, if the moon comes up clear bye and bye, we’ll run out and see if we can recover them.”

But for Bess she had no word, or look, and when the other put out her hand timidly and tried to thank her, as they neared the shore, Polly only said:

“That’s all right. We’re used to helping people who get overturned. It really is nothing.”

She would not see Bessie’s hand. The latter felt the repulse and Wyn, who watched them both anxiously, dared not say a word.

CHAPTER XV

TROUBLE “BRUIN”

The other girls and Mrs. Havel were all down on the beach to meet the catboat and her passengers. To see Wyn and Bessie returning across the lake in the sailboat, instead of the canoes, forewarned the Go-Aheads that an accident had happened.

But although the girls were wet and bedraggled, the captain of the club made light of the affair.

“Where are your canoes?”

“What’s happened?”

“Who is it with you?”

“What under the sun did you do–go overboard?”

Wyn answered all questions in a single sentence:

“We were capsized and lost the letters and things; but Polly picked us up and brought us home.”

Then, amid the excited cries and congratulations, her voice rose again:

“Isn’t she brave? What do you think of my Polly Jolly now? Can you blame me for being proud of her?”

“I tell you wh–what she is!” gasped Bessie. “She’s the bravest and smartest girl I ever heard of.”

“Good for you, Bess!” shouted Frank Cameron, helping the castaways ashore. “You’re coming to your senses.”

“And–and I’m sorry,” blurted out Bess, “that I ever treated her so – ”

Polly shoved off the catboat and proceeded to get under way again.

“Oh, do come ashore, Polly!” begged Grace.

“I want to hug you, Miss Jarley!” cried Percy.

“What? All wet as I am now?” returned the boatman’s daughter, laughing–although the laugh was not a pleasant one. “You make too much of this matter. We’re used to oversets on the lake. It is nothing.”

“You do not call saving two girls’ lives nothing, my dear–surely?” proposed Mrs. Havel.

“If I saved them, I am very, very glad of it,” returned Polly, gravely. “Anybody would be glad of that, of course, But you are making too much of it – ”

“My father will not think so!” exclaimed the almost hysterical Bess. “When he learns of this he will not be able to do enough for you – ”

“Your father can do nothing for me, Bessie Lavine!” cried the boatman’s daughter, with sharpness.

“Oh, Polly!” said Wyn, holding out her arms to her.

“He’ll–he’ll want to,” pursued Bess, eagerly. “Oh! he will! He’d do anything for you now – ”

“There’s only one thing Henry Lavine can do for me,” cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. “He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him–be decent to him. I don’t want anything else–and I don’t want that as pay for fishing you out of the lake!”

She had got the sail up again and now the breeze filled it. The Coquette laid over and slipped away from the shore. Her last words had silenced all the girls–even Mrs. Havel herself.

Bess burst into tears. She was quite broken down, and Wyn went off with her to the tent, her arm over her shoulder, and whispering to her comfortingly.

“I don’t care. Polly’s served her right,” declared Frank Cameron.

“I do not know that Polly can be blamed,” Mrs. Havel observed. “But–but I wish she was more forgiving. It is not for herself that she speaks, however. It is for her father.”

“And I’ll wager he’s just as nice a man as ever was,” declared Frank. “I’m going to ask my father if he will not do something for Mr. Jarley.”

“Do so, Frances,” advised the chaperon. “I think you will do well.”

The accident cast a cloud over Green Knoll Camp for the evening. The girls who had been swamped went to bed and were dosed with hot drinks brewed over the campfire by Mrs. Havel. And when the boys came over in their fleet for an evening sing and frolic, they were sent back again to the island almost at once.

The boys did not take altogether kindly to this rebuff, and Tubby was heard to say:

“Isn’t that just like girls? Because they got a little wet they must go to bed and take catnip tea, or something, and be quiet. Their nerves are all unstrung! Gee! wouldn’t that make your ears buzz?”

“Aw, you’re a doubting Thomas and always will be, Tub,” said Ferd Roberts. “You never believe what you’re told. You’re as suspicious as the farmer who went to town and bought a pair of shoes, and when he’d paid for ’em the clerk says:

“‘Now, sir, can’t I sell you a pair of shoe trees?’

“‘Don’t you get fresh with me, sonny,’ says the farmer, his whiskers bristling. ‘I don’t believe shoes kin be raised on trees any more ’n I believe rubbers grow on rubber trees, or oysters on oyster plants, b’gosh!’”

“Well,” snarled the fat youth, as the other Busters laughed, “the girls are always making excuses. You can never tell what a girl means, anyway–not by what she says.”

“You know speech was given us to hide our thoughts,” laughed Dave.

“Say! I’ll get square just the same–paddlin’ clear over here for nothing. Humph! I know that Hedges girl is afraid there’s bears in the woods? Say, fellers! I’ve got it! Yes, I’ve got it!”

When Tubby spoke in this way, and his eyes snapped and he began to look eager, his mates knew that the fat youth’s gigantic mind was working overtime, and they immediately gathered around and stopped paddling.

As Dave said, chuckling, a little later, “trouble was bruin!”

In the morning the girls found the two lost canoes on the shore below the camp. Polly and her father had evidently gone out in the evening, after the moon rose, and recovered them. Neither, of course, was damaged.

“And we must do something nice to pay them for it!” cried Grace.

Bessie was still deeply concerned over Polly’s attitude.

“I am going to write father at once, and tell him all about it,” she said. “And I am sorry for the way I treated Polly at first. Do you suppose she will ever forgive me, Wyn?”

Just as Wyn had once said in discussing Bessie’s character: when the latter realized that she was in the wrong, or had been unfair to anyone, she was never afraid to admit her fault and try to “make it up.” But this seemed to be a case where it was very difficult for Bessie to “square herself.”

The boatman’s daughter had shown herself unwilling to be friendly with Bess. Nor was Polly, perhaps, to be blamed.

However, on this particular morning the girls of Green Knoll Camp had something besides Bessie’s disturbance of mind and Polly Jarley’s attitude to think about.

And this “something” came upon them with a suddenness that set the entire camp in an uproar. Grace, the dilatory, was picking berries before breakfast along the edge of the clearing, and popping them into her mouth as fast as she could find ripe ones.

“Come here and help, Grace!” called Percy from the tent where she was shaking out the heavy blankets. “I’m not going to do all my work and yours, too.”

“You come and help me. It’s more fun,” returned Grace, laughing at her.

Then the lazy girl turned and reached for a particularly juicy blackberry, in the clump ahead of her. Percy saw her struck motionless for a second, or two; then the big girl fairly fell backward, rolled over, picked herself up, and raced back to the tents, her mouth wide open and her hair streaming in the wind.

“What is the matter?” gasped Percy.

“Oh, Grace! you look dreadful! Tell us, what has happened!” begged Bessie, as the big girl sank down by the entrance to the tent, her limbs too weak to bear her farther.

“What has scared you so, Grace?” demanded Wyn, running up.

Grace’s eyes rolled, she shut and opened her mouth again several times. Then she was only able to gasp out the one word:

“Bear!”

The other girls came crowding around. “What do you mean, Grace?” “Stop trying to scare us, Grace!” “She’s fooling,” were some of the cries they uttered.

But Wyn saw that her friend was really frightened; she was not “putting it on.”

“You don’t mean that it was a real bear?” cried Frank Cameron.

“A bear, I tell you!” moaned Grace, rocking herself to and fro. “I told you they were here in the woods.”

“Oh, dear me!” screamed Mina. “What shall we do?”

“You didn’t see it, Grace?” demanded Wyn, sternly. “You only heard it.”

“I saw it, I tell you!”

“Not really?”

“Do–do you think I don’t know a bear when I see one?” demanded Grace. “He–he’ll be right after us – ”

“No. If it was a real, wild bear he would be just as scared at seeing you as you would be at seeing him,” remarked the decidedly sensible captain.

“He–he couldn’t be as scared as I am,” moaned Grace, with considerable emphasis.

“I don’t believe there’s a bear within miles and miles of here!” declared Frank.

“Well! I declare I hope there isn’t,” cried Bess.

“I’ll look,” offered Wyn. “Grace just thought she saw something.”

“A great, black and brown hairy beast!” moaned Grace. “He stood right up on his hind legs and stretched out his arms to me – ”

“Enamored of all your young charms,” giggled Frank.

“It’s no joke!” gasped the frightened one.

“It might be a bear, you know,” quavered Mina.

The breakfast was being neglected. Mrs. Havel was down at the edge of the lake washing out some bits of lace. She had not heard the rumpus.

“I’m going to see,” announced Frank, and ran back over the course Grace had come.

She reached the berry bushes. She parted them and peered through. She began to enter the jungle, indeed, in search of bruin.

And then the girls all heard a sort of snuffling growl–just the sort of a noise they thought a bear must make. Frank jumped out of those bushes as though they had become suddenly afire!

“Wha–what did I tell you?” screamed Grace.

“He’s there!” groaned Mina.

Then suddenly a dark object appeared among the saplings and underbrush.

“Look out, Frank! Run!” cried the other girls, in chorus; but Miss Cameron needed no urging; she ran with all her might!

CHAPTER XVI

TIT FOR TAT

But instead of returning toward the tents she ran straight across the clearing. Possibly she did not stop to think where she was going, for she came against the underbrush again and that terrific growl was once more repeated.

Frankie stopped as though she had been shot. Right in front of her loomed a second black, hairy figure.

She glared around wildly. At the back of the clearing was the opening into the wood path leading from Windmill Farm down to the boat-landing at John Jarley’s place. And in that opening, and for an instant, appeared likewise a threatening form!

“Come here! Come here, Frank!” shrieked Bess. “There’s another of them–we’re surrounded.”

The Cameron girl started again, and let out the last link of speed that there was in her. She ran straight down to the shore where Mrs. Havel just aroused by the shrieks, was starting to return to camp.

The other girls piled after her. But Wyn brought up the rear. She looked around now and then. Three bears! In a place where no bears had been seen for years and years! Wyn was puzzled.

“There are bears in the woods, Mrs. Havel!” gasped Grace.

“Nonsense, child!”

“I saw ’em. One almost grabbed me,” declared the big girl.

“And I saw them, Auntie,” urged Percy Havel.

“This way! this way!” cried Frank, running along the shore under the high knoll on which the camp was pitched. “They can’t see us down here.”

Mrs. Havel was urged along by her niece and Grace. Wyn brought up the rear. Oddly enough, none of the bears came out of the bushes–that she could see.

The girls plunged along the sand, and through the shallow water for several yards. Here the bushes grew right down to the edge of the lake. Suddenly Wyn caught sight of something ahead, and uttered a sharp command:

“Stop! every one of you! Do you hear me, Frank? Stop!”

“Oh, dear! they can eat us here just as well as anywhere,” groaned Grace.

“Now be quiet!” said Wynifred, in some heat. “We’ve all been foolish enough. Those were not bears.”

“Cows, maybe, Wynnie?” asked Mrs. Havel. “But I am quite as afraid of cows – ”

“Nor cows, either. I guess you wouldn’t have been fooled for a minute if you had seen them,” said Wyn.

“What do you mean, Wyn?” cried Frank. “I tell you I saw them with my own eyes – ”

“Of course you did. So did I,” admitted Wyn. “But we did not see them right. They are not bears, walking on their hind legs; they are just boys walking on the only legs they’ve got!”

“The Busters!” ejaculated Frank.

“Oh, Wyn! do you think so?” asked Mina, hopefully.

“Look ahead,” commanded Wyn. “There are the boys’ canoes. They paddled over here this morning and dressed up in those old moth-eaten buffalo robes they had over there, on the island, and managed to frighten us nicely.”

“That’s it! They played a joke on us,” began Frank, laughing.

But Mrs. Havel was angry. “They should be sent home for playing such a trick,” she said, “and I shall speak to Professor Skillings about it.”

“Pooh!” said Wyn. “They’re only boys. And of course they’ll be up to such tricks. The thing to do is to go them one better.”

“How, Wyn, how?” cried her mates.

“I do not know that I can allow this, Wynifred,” began Mrs. Havel, doubtfully.

“You wish to punish them; don’t you, Mrs. Havel?”

“They should be punished–yes.”

“Then we have the chance,” cried Wyn, gleefully. “You go back to the camp, Mrs. Havel, and we girls will take their canoes–every one of them. We’ll call them the trophies of war, and we’ll make the Busters pay–and pay well for them–before they get their canoes back. What do you say, girls?”

“Splendid!” cried Frank. “And they frightened me so!”

“Look out for the biscuits, Mrs. Havel, please,” begged Bess. “I am afraid they will be burned.”

The lady returned hurriedly to the camp on the top of the hillock. When she mounted the rise from the shore, there was a circle of giggling youths about the open fireplace and a pile of moth-eaten buffalo hides near by. Dave was messing with the Dutch oven in which Bess had just before put the pan of biscuit for breakfast.

“Ho, ho!” cried Tubby. “Where are the girls?”

“Bear hunting, I bet!” cried Ferd Roberts.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Havel,” said Dave, smiling rather sheepishly. “I hope we didn’t scare you.”

“You rather startled me–coming unannounced,” admitted Mrs. Havel, but smiling quietly. “You surely have not breakfasted so early?”

“No. That’s part of the game,” declared another youth. “We claim forfeit–and in this case take payment in eats.”

“I am afraid you are more slangy than understandable,” returned Mrs. Havel. “Did you come for something particular?”

“Goodness! didn’t you see those girls running?” cried Ferd.

“Running? Where to?” queried the chaperone.

Dave began to look more serious.

“Perhaps they are running yet!” squealed Tubby, only seeing the fun of it.

“Bet they’ve gone for help to hunt the bears,” laughed another of the reckless youngsters.

“They’ll get out the whole countryside to find ’em,” choked Ferdinand Roberts. “That’s too rich.”

“Are you sure the girls didn’t come your way, Mrs. Havel?” asked Dave, with anxiety.

“Oh, the girls will be back presently. I came up to see to the biscuit, Mr. Shepard. About inviting you to breakfast–You know, I am only a guest of Green Knoll Camp myself. I couldn’t invite you,” said Mrs. Havel, demurely.

The boys looked at each other in some surprise and Tubby’s face fell woefully.

“Ca-can’t we do something to help you get breakfast, Mrs. Havel?”

Mrs. Havel had to hide a smile at that, but she remained obdurate. “I have really nothing to do with it, Sir Tubby. You must wait for the girls to come,” she said.

The boys began whispering together; but they did not move. They had scuttled over from their own camp early with the express intention of “getting one” on the girls, and making a breakfast out of it. But now the accomplishment of their purpose seemed doubtful, and there was a hollow look about them all that should have made Mrs. Havel pity them.

That lady, however, remembered vividly how she had run along the shore in fear of a flock of bears; this was a part of the boys’ punishment for that ill-begotten joke.

The biscuit were beginning to brown, the coffee sent off a delicious odor, and here were eggs ready to drop into the kettle of boiling water for their four-minute submersion. Besides, there was mush and milk. Every minute the boys became hungrier.

“Aren’t the girls ever coming?” sighed Tubby. “They couldn’t be so heartless.”

“They haven’t gone far; have they?” queried Dave Shepard. “We saw their canoes on the beach.”

Just then the laughter of the girls in the distance broke upon the ears of those on the hillock. They were approaching along the shore–apparently from the direction of Jarley’s landing.

“They don’t seem to have been much scared, after all,” grumbled Tubby to Ferd.

“It was a silly thing to do, anyway,” returned young Roberts. “Suppose we don’t get any breakfast?”

At this horrid thought the fat youth almost fainted. The girls came in sight, and at once hailed the boys gaily:

“Oh! see who’s here!” cried Frank. “What a lovely surprise!”

“Isn’t it?” said Bess, but with rather a vicious snap. “We couldn’t get along, of course, without having a parcel of boys around. ’Morning, Mr. Shepard.”

Bess made a difference between Dave and the rest of the Busters, for Dave had helped her in a serious difficulty.

“Where’s the professor?” demanded Grace. “Isn’t he here, too?”

“He’s having breakfast all by his lonesome over on the island,” said Ferd, and Tubby groaned at the word “breakfast,” while Dave added:

“We–we got a dreadfully early start this morning.”

“Quite a start–I should say,” returned Wyn, smiling broadly. “And now you’re hungry, I suppose?”

“Oh, aren’t we, just?” cried one of the crowd, hollowly.

“How about it, Bess? Is there enough for so many more?”

Bess was already sifting flour for more biscuit. She said: “I’ll have another panful in a jiffy. Put in the eggs, Mina. We can make a beginning.”

“There’s plenty of mush,” said Mina. “That’s one sure thing.”

“But we can’t all sit down,” cried Grace.

“You know, there are but six of these folding seats, and Wyn’s been sitting on a cracker box ever since we set up the tents.”

“Feed ’em where they’re sitting,” said Wyn, quickly. “Beggars mustn’t be choosers.”

“Jinks! we didn’t treat you like this when you came over to our camp,” cried Ferd.

“And we didn’t come over almost before you were up in the morning,” responded Frank, quickly. “How did you know we had made our ‘twilights’ at such an unconscionable hour?”

The girls were all laughing a good deal. Nobody said a word about the “bear” fright, and the boys felt a little diffidence about broaching the subject. Evidently their joke had fallen flat.

But the girls really had no intention of being mean to the six Busters. The first pan of biscuit came out of the oven a golden brown. Grace and Percy set them and the bowls of mush on the table, and handed around other bowls and a pitcher of milk to the circle of boys, sitting cross-legged on the ground like so many tailors.

There was honey for the biscuits, too, as well as golden butter–both from Windmill Farm. The eggs were cooked just right, and there were plenty of them. Crisp radishes and sliced cucumbers and tomatoes added to the fare.

“Gee!” sighed Tubby, “doesn’t it take girls to live right in camp? And look at those doughnuts.”

“I fried them,” cried Mina, proudly. “Mrs. Havel showed me how, though.”

“Mrs. Havel, come over to Gannet Island and teach us how to cook,” cried Dave. “We don’t have anything like this.”

“Not a sweetie except what we buy at the Forge–and that’s baker’s stuff,” complained Tubby.

“Don’t you think you boys had better be pretty good to us–if you want to come to tea–or breakfast–once in a while?” asked Wyn, pointedly.

“Right!” declared Dave.

“Got us there,” admitted Ferdinand.

“I’ll see that they behave themselves, Wyn,” cried Tubby, with great enthusiasm. “These fellows are too fresh, anyway – ”

But at this the other boys rose up in their might and pitched upon Master Blaisdell, rolling him over and over on the grass and making him lose half of his last doughnut.