Jack Winters' Baseball Team Part 11

"Toby, you get one of those boards over yonder, and come out to help me if I'm in trouble, understand?" he jerked out, even as the flivver came to a sudden stop, and he was bounding over the side regardless of any exit.

"All right, Jack; you bet I will!" Toby shouted, following suit.

Jack began to shed his outer clothes as he ran swiftly forward. First his cap went, and then his coat. He had low shoes on so that he was able to detach them with a couple of quick jerks, and at the loss of the laces.

Two seconds, when at the verge of the water, sufficed for him to get rid of his trousers, and then, he went in with a rush.

Toby meanwhile had tried to follow suit even as he made for the boards in question. It had been just like Jack to glimpse these in the beginning, while those other fellows apparently did not know a board was within half a mile.

Seeing what Toby meant to do, the two swimmers followed suit, so that presently the whole three of them had each picked up a plank, and were pushing out with it.

Jack had plunged ahead, swimming in any old way, since his one object just then was speed, and not style. He could not have done better had he been up against a swarm of rivals working for a prize. Well, there _was_ a prize dangling there in plain sight. A precious human life was at stake, and unless he could arrive in time poor Joel might go down, never to come up again in his senses.

He had already been under once, and through his desperate efforts succeeded in reaching the surface of the agitated water again. Even as Jack started swimming, after getting in up to his neck, the drowning boy vanished again.

Jack swam on, trying to increase his pace, if such a thing were possible. He must get on the spot without the waste of a second. Joel would likely come to the surface again, but battling more feebly against the threatening fate. If he went down a third time it would be all over but the funeral, Jack knew.

He was more than two-thirds of the way there when to his ecstatic joy he once more discovered the head of Joel. The boy was still making a gallant fight, but under a fearful handicap.

Jack shouted hoa.r.s.ely as he swam onward:

"Keep fighting, Joel! We'll get you, old chap! Strike out as hard as you can! You're all right, I tell you, only don't stop working!"

Perhaps these cheering words did help Joel to continue his weakening efforts to keep himself afloat. Possibly had it not been for his hearing Jack's voice raised in encouragement, he might have given up the ghost before then.

Nearer Jack surged, his heart seeming to be in his throat with dread lest Joel go down again a few seconds before he could get within touch.

The three boys with the boards were also coming along in a solid bunch, although of course with less speed than Jack showed, owing partly to the fact that they had to shove the planks before them.

Now, Joel, with a last despairing gurgle was sinking again, and for the very last time, being utterly exhausted by his frantic struggles, and the terrible pain occasioned by the cramp.

But Jack knew he had arrived close enough to dart forward and clutch his comrade before the other could quite vanish from view. Joel was so far gone that he did not try to grip his rescuer, as most drowning persons will do in their frantic desire to save themselves at any cost.

Jack tried to keep the boy's head above water as best he could. He made no effort to swim towards the sh.o.r.e. What was the use when the other fellows were coming along with their boards. The one thing necessary just then was to prevent Joel from swallowing any more water; he had already no doubt gulped in huge quant.i.ties, and lost the ability to breathe properly.

So Toby and the other two found them when they finally arrived. The planks were arranged so that Joel could be raised and sustained by their means; after which the little procession of swimmers headed for the bank.

When they arrived, Joel was lifted out of the water and carried tenderly up to a patch of green sward lying in the shade of a wide-branching oak.

Here they laid him down on his chest, while Jack proceeded to work over him, instructing the other fellows just what they were to do to a.s.sist.

He knelt astride with one knee on either side of Joel's body, and commenced pressing down regularly on the small of his back, so as to induce an artificial respiration. At the same time, Toby and one of the other fellows worked the unconscious boy's arms back and forth like a pair of pistons; while the third fellow started to rub his cold lower extremities.

At first Joel seemed pretty far gone, and his appearance sent a chill through the sympathetic heart of Toby Hopkins. But after they had kept up this vigorous treatment for a little while, there were signs of returning animation. Joel belched out a gallon of water, Toby always insisted, and inside of ten minutes was able to talk, though Jack insisted on keeping up the rubbing until the boy's body was a rosy hue from the irritation.

"Now get some clothes on, Joel, and you'll soon be feeling prime," he told the other, whose lips were still blue and quivering.

Joel had had quite enough of swimming for one day. Indeed, he would be pretty cautious about getting any distance away from the sh.o.r.e after that, having received a most fearful shock. Still, boys recover from such things, given a little time, and Joel had always been reckoned a fellow who did not know the meaning of the word "fear."

The other boys had apparently lost the joy of bathing for that day.

They, too, started to don their clothes, and begged Toby to "hold up,"

so that they might get a lift to town in the flivver; which, being a whole-souled fellow, of course, "Hop" was only too glad to do.

Later on, after arriving home, Jack and Toby talked matters over between themselves. This new and entirely unexpected happening had been only another link in the growing chain of troubles hanging over the head of the captain of the Chester baseball team.

"What if we hadn't chanced to be on the road just at that very minute, Jack?" ventured Toby, with a shiver; "poor old Joel would certainly have been drowned, because neither Frank nor Rufus had the slightest idea what to do so as to save him. And that would have broken up our combination in the nine, all right, because we'd find it hard to replace such a runner and fielder and batter as Joel."

"Of course," said Jack, "the worst thing of all would be losing a friend. Joel is a mighty fine all-around fellow, and most of us are fond of him. And just as you say, the game would like as not have to be postponed, because how could we play as we would want to with a chum lying dead at home? So I'm grateful because we did chance to be Johnny-on-the-spot."

"That was sure a great job you did, Jack, believe me; and when I say such a thing I'm not meaning to throw bouquets either. Whee! but you did shoot through the water like a fish. I've watched a pickerel dart at a minnow, but no slinker ever had the bulge on you that time."

"I had to get along with all sail set," Jack told him, with a smile, for it is always pleasant to have a friend hand out a meed of praise, even to the most modest boy going. "I knew Joel was at the last gasp, and even a second lost might mean he'd go down for the third time before I could get there. And yet do you know, Toby, it seemed to me right then and there as if I had a ton of lead fastened to me. Why, I felt as though something was holding me back, just as you know the nightmare grips you usually. But when I was within striking distance, I knew I could save Joel. He made a gallant fight, and deserves a lot of praise."

"I wonder what we'll have happen next, Jack? Seems to me not a day pa.s.ses but you've got to play the rescue act with some member of our team. There was Fred worrying you, and still acting queer; then along comes Donohue threatening to give us the slip because his folks meant to move out of town, and he couldn't pitch unless he lived in Chester. Now, as if those things didn't count up enough to keep you awake nights, old Joel had to go and try to kick the bucket, and force you to yank him out of the lake."

Jack laughed and shook his head.

"It's hard to tell what another day may bring forth, Toby," he went on to say. "Remember, this is only Thursday, and Friday is said to be a very unlucky day in some people's lives, especially when it falls on the thirteenth of the month, as happens this year. There are still a few fellows in the nine who haven't shown up yet in the catastrophe ward.

Why, Toby, it might even be _you_ who'll wave the flag and call out for help."

"I give you my affidavit, Jack, that I'm going to play mighty safe from now on. No fishing or swimming for me, and I'll even run that old flivver at slow speed, for fear it takes a notion to land me in a ditch, and come in on top of me. But I hope, Jack, you're not getting discouraged with all these things coming right along?"

"I might, Toby, if I were not built on a stubborn line. We'll go to Harmony on Sat.u.r.day and make a fight for that game even if we have to lug along a crippled nine, some of them on crutches!"

Toby brightened up on hearing the leader grimly say this.

"That's the sort of stuff, Jack!" he exclaimed, slapping his chum on the back.

"In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail! We'll go forth with our hearts set on victory, and that's one half of the battle.

Hurrah! for Chester!"

CHAPTER XIV

A NIGHT ALARM

Before the two boys parted that afternoon, after the practice of the whole regular nine, barring Joel, who, taking Jack's advice, laid off for one occasion, Joel had asked the captain to drop over when he had finished his supper.

"I want to see you about a number of things," he had told Jack; "not so much in connection with the game we're scheduled to play, as other affairs looking to the ambitious programme we've mapped out for Chester boys the rest of the summer, in the fall, and even up to winter. For one thing, I'd like to give you a few pointers about the fellows in our crowd, so that you can size them up for the football squad later on."

That caught Jack in a weak spot.

"I'll go you there, Toby," he hastened to say, "because I've been trying to figure things out along those lines myself. When you're placing men on an eleven, you ought to know their every strong and weak point; and I'm too new a hand here in Chester to be on to such things. So I'll be glad to have you give me points."

Accordingly, he knocked at the Hopkins' door soon after seven that evening, and was immediately admitted by Toby himself. The Hopkins family consisted of Toby's father and mother, and an older son just then away on a trip to the West, as he was attending college, and had been promised this treat if he pa.s.sed with honors. There was also a very small girl, named Tessie, who naturally was the pet of the household, and in a way to be spoiled by the adoration of her two brothers.

Toby had a den of his own in the upper part of the rambling house. Here just as most boys love to do, he had the walls fairly covered with the burgees of various colleges, all sorts of mementos collected during his outdoor experiences, curios that in Toby's eyes were precious because many of them bore an intimate relation with some little adventure or jolly outing in which he had taken part.