The High School Boys' Canoe Club Part 16

Some of the girls frowned their disappointment at being left out, but others clapped their hands. Laura and Belle stepped on the scow's platform.

"I wouldn't try to go, if I were you, Dan," urged. d.i.c.k, as young Dalzell stepped forward to board the scow.

"I'm all right," Dan insisted.

"Sure you're all right?" questioned Hiram Driggs, eyeing Danny Grin's wobbly figure.

"Of course I am," Dan protested, though he spoke rather weakly.

"Then there's a more important job for you," declared Mr. Driggs.

"Stay here on the float with the rest of the young ladies, and explain to them just what you see us doing out yonder."

There was the sound of finality about the boat builder's voice, kindly as it was.

"Cast off," ordered Driggs, taking the tiller. "Tune up that engine and give us some headway."

Clara Marshall was thoughtful enough to run back and get a chair, which she brought down to the float and placed behind Dalzell.

"Sit down," she urged.

"Thank you," said Dan gratefully, "but I didn't need a chair."

Nevertheless the high school girls persuaded him to be seated.

"I---I wasn't drowned, you know," Dan protested as he sat down.

"No; but you got a little water into your lungs," responded one of the girls. "I heard Mr. Driggs tell d.i.c.k Prescott that, as nearly as they could guess, you opened your mouth a trifle just before d.i.c.k and Dave reached you and freed you from that awful trap. Mr. Driggs said that if you had been under water two minutes longer there would have been a different story to tell."

"I wonder how long I was under water?" mused Dan.

"Long enough to drown, Danny Grin," replied Clara Marshall gravely.

Meanwhile the scow was making slow headway out into the river and slightly up stream.

"d.i.c.k, don't you think this canoeing is going to prove too dangerous a sport for you boys?" asked Laura, regarding him with anxious eyes.

"Not when we get so that we know how to behave ourselves in a canoe, Laura," young Prescott answered.

"Yet, no matter how skilful you become, some unexpected accident may happen at any moment," she urged.

"You wouldn't have us be mollycoddles, would you?" asked d.i.c.k in surprise.

"Certainly not," replied Laura with emphasis.

"Yet you would advise us to avoid everything that may have some touch of danger in it."

"I wouldn't advise that, either," Laura contended with sweet seriousness. "But-----"

"You'd like to see us play football some day, wouldn't you?"

"I certainly hope you'll make the high school eleven."

"Football is undoubtedly more dangerous than canoeing," d.i.c.k claimed.

"It seems too bad that boys' best sports should be so dangerous, doesn't it?" questioned young Miss Bentley.

"I can't agree with you," d.i.c.k answered quietly. "It takes danger, and the ability to meet it, to form a boy's character into a man's."

"Then you believe in being foolhardy, as a matter of training?"

asked Laura, with a swift flash of her eyes.

"By no means," Prescott rejoined. "Foolhardy means just what the word implies, and only a fool will be foolhardy. If we had been trying to upset the canoe, as a matter of sport, that would have been the work of young fools."

It was not difficult to locate the spot where the canoe had gone down. The river's current was not swift, and the paddles now floated not very far below the spot where the cherished craft of d.i.c.k & Co. had gone down.

"Do you want the services of some expert divers, Mr. Driggs?"

asked Dave, turning from a brief chat with Belle Meade.

"Not you boys," retorted the boat builder. "You youngsters have been fooling enough with the river bottom for one day."

"Then how do you expect to get hold of the canoe, sir?" asked Tom Reade.

"We'll grapple with tackle," replied Driggs, going toward an equipment box that stood on the forward end of the scow. "We'll use the same kind of tackle that we've sometimes dragged the bottom with when looking for drowned people."

Laura Bentley slivered slightly at his words. Driggs' keen eyes noted the fact, and thereafter he was careful not to mention drowned people in her hearing.

The tackle was soon rigged. Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, who possessed the keenest interest in things mechanical, aided the boat builder under his direction.

Back and forth over the spot the scow moved, while the grapples were frequently s.h.i.+fted and recast.

"Stop the engine," called Driggs. "We've hooked into something!"

Laura turned somewhat pale for a moment; Belle, too, looked uneasy.

The same thought had crossed both girls' minds. What if the tackle had caught the body of some drowned man?

"We'll s.h.i.+ft about here a bit," Driggs proposed, nodding to the engineer to stand by ready to stop or start the engine on quick signal.

Before long the grappling hook of another line was caught;

"The two lines are about twelve feet apart," Driggs announced.

"My idea is that we've caught onto two cross braces of the canoe.

If so we'll have it up in a jiffy."

Both lines were now made fast to the derrick, in such a way that there would be an even haul on both lines. Belting was now connected between the engine and a windla.s.s.

"Haul away, very slowly," Driggs ordered.

Up came the lines, an inch at a time. Belle and Laura could not resist the temptation to go to the edge of the scow and peer over.