The High School Boys' Canoe Club Part 36

How d.i.c.k, Dave, Tom and the others worked, bending all their energies to the task! Yet all felt the same awful doubts.

Bang! The first gun had sounded.

"Down to the line, fellows!" d.i.c.k called. "Put in all the steam you can. I was wrong not to have warmed you up before. Get your blood to moving. One, two, three, four! Hump it! Hump it!"

Their bodies streaming with perspiration, breath coming fast, their faces deeply flushed, d.i.c.k & Co. bent to their paddling.

They were moving fast, yet not as fast as they should be moving and back.

"What on earth can ail our boys?" cried Laura Bentley anxiously as she watched.

"They're moving fast," replied Clara Marshall.

"Yet not the way they should move," Laura insisted. "There's nothing about them of the easy, brisk form that Preston High School shows to-day."

"Don't hint at defeat!" shuddered Belle Meade. "We might be able to stand a Gridley defeat, but the boys couldn't."

Preston's canoe now rested on the water, ready to be aligned at the referee's order. Gridley's craft seemed to be straining as she neared the line.

Suddenly three sharp, short, shrill blasts sounded from the whistle of the judges' launch.

"Prescott!" roared the referee.

"Now, what's up, I wonder?" d.i.c.k asked himself, with another sinking feeling at heart.

The judges' boat was making fast time toward the Gridley High School entry.

CHAPTER XX

"d.i.n.kY-BAT! HOT SAIL!"

"Captain Prescott, what is wrong with your boat?" demanded Referee Tyndall, as the judges' launch stole up close.

"Something seems to be wrong with us, I'll admit, sir," d.i.c.k made answer. "I'll be greatly obliged to you, sir, if you'll tell me what it is.

"What are you towing?" asked the referee bluntly.

"Towing?" repeated d.i.c.k in bewilderment.

"That's what I asked," repeated the referee. "When you came down on this last spurt I'm sure that at one moment I saw a length of line rise above the water astern of you. Then, further back, I saw something else jerked to the surface."

"Why, we can't be towing anything," d.i.c.k insisted. "You saw our canoe launched."

"Late start, if you don't line the canoes up at once, referee,"

warned the time-keeper.

But Mr. Tyndall had his own views.

"The starting time will be delayed," he announced sharply. "Captain Prescott, take your canoe to the landing stage."

"All right, sir."

"Captain Hartwell you will follow."

"Very good, sir."

Going in to the landing stage d.i.c.k gave his crew an easy pace, yet they were soon alongside the float.

"Now, take your canoe out of water, Gridley," commanded the referee, stepping ash.o.r.e from the launch. "I want a look at the craft."

d.i.c.k & Co. lifted the war canoe to the float bow first. Just as the stern cleared the water a cry went up from scores of throats.

For the referee had grasped a line made fast to the bottom of the canoe near the stern.

Hauling on that line he brought in several yards of it---then, at the outer end of the line came a light blanket, dripping.

Through the middle of the blanket the end of the line had been secured.

d.i.c.k Prescott gasped. His chums rubbed their eyes. Bob Hartwell, who had landed, looked on in utter consternation.

"For the love of decency!" gasped Referee Tyndall. "Who rigged on a drag like that."

The blanket, towing below the surface, was a drag that could be depended upon, perhaps, to delay the canoe at least one length in every dozen that her crew could put her through the water.

"None of our fellows did that trick," d.i.c.k declared hotly. "You saw us launch our canoe, Mr. Referee, and she was clear when we launched her."

"I naturally wouldn't suspect the Gridley crew of rigging a drag on the Gridley canoe," remarked the referee dryly, as he followed the line back to the canoe. "See! Some scoundrel managed to twist a screw-eye into one of your frame timbers underneath.

The line is made fast to the screw-eye. Captain Prescott, that could have been done by someone hidden under this float while your craft lay alongside. He could bring his mouth above water, under the timbers of this float. Then, with his hand and arm hidden under water the same rascal could easily reach out and fasten in the screw-eye."

"Prescott," gasped Bob Hartwell, in a disgusted voice, "I hope you don't believe that any of our fellows, or their friends, could be guilty of such contemptible work!"

"Hartwell," d.i.c.k answered promptly, resting a hand on the arm of the Preston High School boy, "I am offended that you should believe us capable of suspecting Preston High School of anything as mean as this. Of course we don't suspect Preston High School!"

The referee himself now twisted the screw-eye out of its bed in the canoe frame. Then he gathered up the wet cord and blanket and hurled the whole ma.s.s sh.o.r.eward.

"I'd pay twenty-five dollars out of my own pocket," the race official declared hotly, "for proof against the scoundrel who tried to spoil clean sport in this manner!"

Nearly all of the crowd of spectators had now surged down close to the float.

"I think we could make a pretty good guess at who is behind this contemptible business," snarled Danny Grin, his face, for once, darkened by a threatening frown.

"Who did it?" challenged Referee Tyndall. Dalzell opened his mouth, but Prescott broke in sharply with the command:

"Be silent, Dan! Don't mention a name when you haven't proof."

"Can it possibly be anyone from Preston?" asked Hartwell anxiously.

"If it is, I beg you, Dalzell, to let me have the name---privately, if need be. I'd spend the summer running down this thing."