Wyn's Camping Days Part 44

"Wyn made the discovery."

"What is for one is for all," declared Wynnie. "But we won't win Mr.

Lavine's prize unless the boat is raised and the silver images are delivered to Dr. Shelton. If those men get hold of the boat----"

Suddenly one of the boatmen--a long-legged fellow with a cast in one eye and lantern jaws spa.r.s.ely covered with sandy whisker--came forward to the bow of the bateau and poised himself for a leap to the diving float.

"Keep off!" Dave warned him, swinging his paddle over his head. "You jump over here and you'll catch this where Kellup caught the hen--right in the neck! You let us alone and we'll let you alone."

The boatman told him, in no very choice language, what he would do to Dave when he caught him; but the captain of the Busters did not appear to be much shaken.

"Hold, on, Eb!" yelled the other boatman. "I'll run that raft down and spill 'em all off."

"You try it and you'll likely smash your boat," shouted Dave. "I warn you."

Mina Everett began to cry softly, for the suggestion of a pitched battle between the boys and the boatmen frightened her dreadfully. Bess began to grow excited.

"Aren't those men just _mean_? I wish I had something to hit them with--I do! I believe I'll get out on the raft with _my_ paddle."

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," said Grace. "I think the boys are as nice to us as they can be."

Suddenly, while the attention of all the others was held by the exciting situation on the raft, Frank Cameron cried out:

"Who's this coming? Oh, girls! isn't that Polly? Look, Wyn!"

Wyn almost overturned her canoe in her eagerness to back out of the group and whirl her canoe about that she might see. Down upon the scene was bearing one of the larger power boats from the other end of the lake.

"It's Dr. Shelton's _Suns.h.i.+ne Boy_!" cried Percy Havel.

"And that _is_ Polly Jolly in the bow," exclaimed Wyn. "Hurrah!"

She drove her paddle into the water and sent her canoe driving for the approaching motor boat.

"Polly! Polly!" she called, long before the boatman's daughter could hear her.

But Polly recognized her just the same, and waved her hand; there was a gentleman pacing the deck, too, who came to lean on the rail and look at the flying canoe. Wyn next saw Mr. Jarley, in his working clothes, put his head out of the cabin that housed the motor.

"It's Dr. Shelton," Wyn thought. "Then he and Mr. Jarley have made it up. I'm so glad!"

But the motor boat was coming fast and Wyn drove her canoe as though she were racing. Swerving the craft quickly, the girl brought it very nicely into a berth beside the motor boat. Polly leaned down and steadied the canoe with the boat hook, and her friend hopped aboard. Then together they hoisted over the rail the almost swamped canoe.

"What's all this? What's all this?" demanded Dr. Shelton. "You girls are regular acrobats. Hullo! This is the young miss who won the canoe race and the swimming match for girls, the other day. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir," said Polly, presenting Wyn proudly. "This is Miss Wynifred Mallory, my very dear friend."

"The girl who thinks she has found our old motor boat--eh?" asked the burly doctor.

"I am sure she has found it, sir," declared Polly. "And what are Eb and his chum, Billy Smith, trying to do there at the raft, Wyn?"

"They suspect something; but the boys have got the float right over the sunken boat and have promised to hold the bateau men off----"

Just then Dr. Shelton turned quickly, picked up a megaphone and bawled through it to the bateau men, one of whom had leaped aboard the boys, raft.

"Hey, you! Get off that raft and keep off it, or I'll put you both in jail at the Forge. Understand me?"

It was evident that the boatmen _did_ understand the doctor, for the trespa.s.ser aboard the raft leaped back into the bateau without a blow being struck, although the boys were ready for him. The big sail of the craft was immediately raised and she had borne off to some distance when the _Suns.h.i.+ne Boy_ was allowed to drift in close to the float.

"Now, boys," said Dr. Shelton, genially, "I understand you have found my old _Bright Eyes_ under water here and have been guarding it from all comers. Is that right?"

"No, Doctor," returned Dave. "We fellows have had mighty little to do with it. It's the girls----"

"It's Wyn!" cried Frank, "and n.o.body else."

"Wyn did it all," agreed Bess.

"But those men, poking around here, might have found it and laid claim to it, sir, if the boys had not come to the rescue," declared the captain of the Go-Aheads, warmly.

"You seem to be a Mutual Admiration Society," laughed the doctor.

"However, if the boat is here and that express box intact, as Jarley says, I certainly owe somebody something handsome for finding it."

"Oh, no, sir!" murmured Wyn, quickly, standing by his side. "You owe me nothing. Mr. Lavine has promised our club a present, and Polly and her father are going to be made very happy if it turns out all right.

_That_ is reward enough for us."

"Humph! you feel that way about it; do you, Miss Mallory?" queried the doctor. "Just the same, if the _Bright Eyes_ really is sunk here I must show my grat.i.tude to somebody."

"Then do something for Polly," Wyn whispered. "Give her a chance to go to school--to Denton Academy with the rest of us girls. That would be fine! She wouldn't let Mr. Lavine do that for her; but I know she'll accept it from you, when her father has proved himself clear of suspicion."

"Ha! John Jarley is a better man than I am," grunted Dr. Shelton. "I had no business to talk to him the way I did regatta day. I'm free to admit I was wrong, whether we recover the _Bright Eyes_ and the silver images, or not!"

And the question, Is it the _Bright Eyes_? was the princ.i.p.al subject of discussion among them all. The boys were just as eager as were the girls over the affair.

"If the sunken boat is all right--and the images," said Dave Shepard, "you girls will be lucky enough to sail a motor boat of your own."

"And we'd never own it if you boys hadn't come forward as you did,"

declared Wyn. "Isn't that so, Bess?"

Bess had to admit the fact, much as she disliked praising boys.

"Oh, we'll let you boys sail in our new boat once in a while," she said.

"Goodness me! I should say yes!" exclaimed Frank, suddenly. "For we've got to have somebody teach us how to run a motor boat; haven't we?"

CHAPTER XXVIII

A FRIEND IN NEED