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

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СКАЧАТЬ Bess standing upon the brink of a steep bank, under a small tree, where the water had washed out a good deal of the earth in a sort of cave beneath where she stood.

      “Hi, Bessie! get back from there!” shouted Dave, warningly. “That place is likely to cave in.”

      “Then you certainly would get a ducking,” added Frank.

      “Pooh! I guess I know what I’m about,” said the girl. “I’m no baby.”

      “You’re acting like one,” growled Dave. “That place is dangerous.”

      “It’s not, Mr. Smartie!” cried Bess, and she stamped her foot in anger.

      And just as though that had been the signal for which it had been waiting, several square yards of the steep bank, with the tree she was clinging to, slumped down into the river.

      The girls screamed, while the boys bounded forward toward the spot where Bessie had disappeared.

      “Oh, Dave!” cried Wyn. “Save her! save her! She can’t swim very well. She will be drowned!”

      CHAPTER VII

      THE STORM BREAKS

      Dave Shepard, followed by the other “Busters,” leaped down to the edge of the water before they came to the spot where the bank had caved. They feared that by tramping along the edge they might bring down even a greater avalanche than had fallen with the unfortunate Bessie.

      “There she is, fellows!” cried Dave. “She’s hanging to the tree!”

      “I see her!” returned Ferd Roberts.

      “Oh, Dave! we can’t reach her,” cried another of the Busters.

      “I wish the professor was here,” cried Ferd. “He’d know what to do.”

      “My goodness!” returned Dave, throwing off his coat and cap. “I don’t need anybody to tell me what to do. We’ve got to go after her!”

      He tore off the low shoes he wore, pitched them after his cap and coat, and leaped into the water. The current tugged hard at the end of the island, and Bessie and the uprooted sapling were being carried out farther and farther into the stream.

      The girl had not screamed. Indeed, she had been startled to such a degree when she went down that she had really not breath enough for speech as yet.

      The boys were “right on the job,” and only a few seconds elapsed from the moment the bank gave away until that in which Dave Shepard sprang into the river.

      Some of the roots of the tree still clung to the shore. A part of the loosened earth had fallen upon these roots and so the tree was anchored. But Bessie was clinging to the hole of the sapling quite fifteen feet from the edge of the solid beach.

      “Catch hold of hands, boys!” commanded Dave. “Make a chain! Give me one hand, Ferd! The current is tugging me right off my feet!”

      His four mates obeyed orders promptly. Dave was captain of the Busters, as Wyn was of the Go-Ahead Club; and the boys had learned to obey their captain promptly–all but Tubby, at least. But Tubby was not in this exciting adventure at all, being asleep under the bush at their lunching place.

      The fat boy was not even aroused when the crowd trooped back to the spot, boys and girls alike chattering like magpies. Dave and Ferd carried the dripping Bessie in “arm-chair” fashion and the girl who so disliked boys clung to her two chief rescuers with abandon.

      They had hauled her out of the river just as she was losing her grasp on the tree. A moment later she might have been whirled down stream by the current and her life endangered. As it was, she had swallowed much water, and was just as wet inside and out as she would ever be in her life.

      All the boys were more or less wet–Dave was saturated to his arm-pits. But the day was warm, and the boys were used to such duckings. It was another matter, however, with the girl. She was already shaking with an incipient chill.

      “Wood on the fire, boys–get a lot of it,” commanded Dave. “And get our blankets and let’s put up a makeshift tent for Bess to use. She must get off her wet duds and wring them out and dry them. Hi! wake up that Tubby Blaisdell. We want his help.”

      Ferd proceeded to walk right over the fat youth on his way for more fuel and that effectually aroused the lad.

      “Hey–you! what are you about?” yawned Tubby. “Can’t you find another place to walk on but me, Ferd Roberts?”

      “I’ve got to walk somewhere,” quoth Ferd.

      “Why! you’re all wet,” gasped Tubby. “And so are you, Dave! And those other fellows–I declare!”

      “Wake up and do something, Tubby,” commanded Dave. “We want to get a tent up, There’s been an accident, and Bessie Lavine is wetter than any of us. Let’s have your knife.”

      “My–my knife?” yawned Tubby, rolling over slowly to reach into his breeches pocket.

      This was too good a chance for Ferd to resist. Tubby was rolling near the edge of the bank as Ferd came back with his arms full of broken branches. Ferd put his foot against Tubby’s back and pushed with all his might.

      “Hi! Stop that! Ugh!”

      Tubby rolled over once–he rolled over twice; then, with many ejaculations and bumps rolled completely down the slope, amid the laughter of the boys and girls above him.

      Tubby missed the canoes–by good luck–and rolled with a splash into a shallow pool at the river’s edge.

      “You mean thing!” he yelled, getting up with some alacrity and shaking his fist at Ferd. “I–I’m all wet.”

      “So are we, Tubby,” Dave said. “You belong to our lodge now. Come on up here with that knife of yours. Didn’t I tell you I wanted to use it?”

      The other boys were scurrying after stakes and blankets, while the girls fed the fire till it roared high, and Bessie stood in the heat of the flames.

      “What do you think of the boys now, Bess?” Frank Cameron whispered in the victim’s ear. “Some good–at times–eh?”

      “Now, don’t worry her, Frank,” commanded Mina, the tender-hearted. “The poor, dear girl! See–she’s just as wet as she can possibly be.”

      “Oh, and wasn’t I scared!” gasped Bess, honestly. “When that bank went down I thought I was right on my way through to China! I did, indeed.”

      “I was so thankful Dave was there,” said Wyn Mallory, thoughtfully. “You see, Dave is one of those dependable boys.”

      “I’ve got to admit it,” gasped Bess. “He’s some good. Why! he caught me just as I was slipping off that tree. I can’t thank him!”

      “Never mind,” said Wyn, cheerfully. “It is decided, I guess, that the boys may be of some use to us this summer, after all.”

      “That’s so, if we’re all going to run the risk of drowning,” Grace Hedges observed.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ