Canoe Boys and Campfires Part 18

Without calling his companions, Clay tried to paddle away from the circling current. But to his horror and consternation the canoe was unmanageable. The violent paddle strokes simply made it swing around on its keel.

Then Clay became terribly frightened, and shouted for help. It was indeed high time. He had already drifted to the base of the rock where the whirlpool terminated, and was now swinging back toward the center of the creek.

The appeal for help--though its meaning was not comprehended at first--brought the other boys to Clay's a.s.sistance. That is to say they paddled toward the dangerous spot and were within an ace of getting in the same fix, when Clay frantically warned them back.

"Keep away! keep!" he shouted. "You must find some other way to help me."

Ned was the first to grasp the situation. During the last few days he had heard more than one tale about this dreaded whirlpool with its merciless undertow, and now it made him sick and faint to see Clay's peril, and yet be unable to devise a way of helping him.

For so it seemed then. It would be simple folly and madness for the others to trust themselves near the rapacious current; yet how else could help reach the imperiled lad?

The whirlpool was thirty feet in diameter, and while Randy and Nugget were looking on with white, scared faces, and Ned was vainly trying to plan a means of rescue, Clay was slowly drifting around the circle, coming nearer each time to the gurgling funnel in the center--and this in spite of the most strenuous paddling. Each stroke, in fact, only deflected the canoe sideways, as though it had no keel, and increased the risk of upsetting.

None realized the danger more than Clay himself and the horror of those few short minutes--they seemed more like hours--he never forgot.

It was not likely of course that the heavy canoe could be dragged clear under water; the whirlpool was no such gigantic thing as that. But it was absolutely certain that when the canoe reached the funnel shaped aperture in the center it would instantly be overturned, and just as surely Clay would be sucked into the black depths below, and whirled off by the fierce undercurrent with no possible chance of reaching the surface.

This was the awful fate that stared him in the face; and all that while he drifted nearer and nearer the end, crying vainly for help, and beating the frothy water with his paddle.

CHAPTER XV

RANDY'S PROPOSITION

At the moment when Clay's situation seemed most hopeless--and while his horrified companions were looking on with the silence of despair--Nugget leaned forward in his canoe, opened the hatch, and drew out a big ball of cord.

"Ned! Ned!" he shouted eagerly, "can you do anything with this outline?

I forgot I had it."

Ned's face flushed with joy, and paddling alongside of Nugget he s.n.a.t.c.hed the cord.

"Follow me to the sh.o.r.e," he cried, "and you too, Randy."

An instant later the three lads were standing on the gravel beach, separated from the whirlpool by no less than sixty or seventy feet.

Ned waved his hand to Clay, and shouted hoa.r.s.ely: "Fight hard, old fellow! We'll save you in a minute."

Then turning quickly to his companions he demanded: "How long is this line?"

"One hundred and forty feet," answered Nugget. "The man I bought it from, said so."

Ned tied the end of it to a ring in the stern of the Pioneer, and ran down the beach, unrolling the ball as he went. Sixty feet away he stopped and cut the cord, then he hurried back with the remainder in his hand. He tied a short stick to the end of the ball, and throwing both into his canoe scrambled after them.

"Now you fellows keep tight hold of that," he directed, pointing to the cord that lay outstretched on the beach. "Pay it out as I go, and when I give the word pull with all your might."

Randy and Nugget began to understand now, and they allowed the line to trail through their fingers as Ned paddled furiously away, heading for a point a little above the whirlpool.

It was a critical and intensely exciting moment. Clay had divined what Ned intended to do, and with this gleam of hope to animate him, he was fighting desperately to keep away from the gurgling hollow which was slowly sucking him into its embrace.

There was scant time to spare when Ned ceased paddling a few feet above and to the right of the whirlpool, and allowed the canoe to drift down stream broadside. But he was wonderfully cool headed and self-possessed, as, with deft fingers he unwrapped the ball of cord and coiled it between his knees. Then he twisted one end about his left hand, and with the right seized the short, heavy stick.

He was now directly opposite Clay, and measuring the distance with a quick eye, he flung the stick straight out. It rose in the air, dragging the cord gracefully after it, and fell across the combing of Clay's canoe.

Ned uttered a sigh of relief, and Randy and Nugget cheered wildly from the sh.o.r.e.

But the danger was not over yet, though Clay had instantly seized the line. The canoe would upset at once if an attempt were made to drag it broadside out of the whirlpool.

Clay comprehended this, and he was quick witted enough to solve the problem. Though his canoe was now verging on the trough of the whirlpool, he calmly tied the line around one blade of his paddle and pressed this with all his might against the big screw eye that was set in the bow of the canoe.

"All right," he shouted hoa.r.s.ely.

Ned turned and waved his hand to Randy and Nugget. They understood the signal, and instantly began to haul on the line.

The Pioneer moved slowly toward sh.o.r.e, and the next instant the strain reached Clay. It was concentrated in the right place, too, and after a couple of refractory tugs, as though the whirlpool was loath to surrender its victim, the Neptune headed about and slowly followed the Pioneer.

This was, if possible, a more exciting moment than any that had preceded it. So much depended on the two lines. If either broke disaster would follow.

But the cords did their duty n.o.bly, and soon Clay was beyond the swirling circles. A few seconds later the Pioneer touched sh.o.r.e, and then three willing pairs of hands dragged the Neptune in so forcibly that a great wave rolled before the bow.

The boys had to help Clay out and prop him against a tree; and for nearly five minutes he sat there so white and helpless that they feared he would faint. A drink of water seemed to revive him some, and finally the color came back to his cheeks.

"I'm all right now," he said, as he got up and walked a few steps. "For a little while I felt like keeling over, and no wonder, after what I went through out there."

"It was a close call," a.s.serted Ned. "Nugget didn't remember about that line a minute too soon. The credit of your rescue belongs to him."

"No it doesn't," said Nugget bashfully. "You did the work."

Clay looked from one to the other, and then held out his hand to Nugget.

"It was your outline and your suggestion," he said in a low voice. "You saved my life. Will you forgive me, old fellow? I put that snake in your canoe this morning, and am awfully sorry I did it."

Nugget hesitated an instant. Then he blushingly accepted the proffered hand and said:

"We'll let the matter drop, Clay. I know you won't do anything like that again."

"No, I won't," replied Clay earnestly. "I'm done with practical jokes.

It was only a garter snake, though I caught it with a forked stick."

Ned and Randy had been at first inclined to pitch into Clay, but seeing that he was sincerely repentant they wisely concluded to ignore his fault, hoping that the lesson would really prove beneficial, and cure him of the fondness for playing tricks.

After a light lunch the Jolly Rovers started off again. They were anxious to get as far as possible from the whirlpool. During the early part of the afternoon they paddled and drifted by turns, for Clay was still a little weak from his experience.

Between three and four o'clock a bend of the creek brought into view an old wooden bridge. The piers were mossy and crumbling to ruins, and the roof and sides had been guiltless of paint for many a long year.

Just below the bridge the Creek widened to a kind of pool. At the foot of a ledge of rocks on the left sh.o.r.e sat three men holding long fishing poles. Their attention seemed to be given to a fourth man, who was sitting in a boat near by, talking earnestly, and pointing from time to time out on the creek.