The Rival Campers Part 33

He rattled off the questions excitedly, before Tom could find breath to answer.

"He's all right, I guess," Tom said, in a moment. "He isn't drowned. He's over there the other side of the Narrows; Bob's with him. He is most dead with cold, though. You better get him over to camp quick or he will die."

They were off like mad, on the run for the Narrows, before he had finished.

Tom waited to rest a few moments more, and then set off slowly for Harvey's camp. "There's enough of them to bring him," he said. "I guess Bob and I have done about all we can to-night."

When he had reached Harvey's camp, however, he waited only to rest and warm himself by the brands of a fire which the campers had left, before he began to make what preparations he could to receive the boys when they should return with Harvey.

There was a big pile of wood at hand, and he started the fire up afresh, after having first pushed the brands nearer the tent, so that the fire would send a comforting warmth inside. Then he brought out a pair of blankets and put them near the fire to warm through. He hung a kettle of water on the stick provided for it, and rummaged through the campers'

stock for the coffee.

Presently the sound of voices told him that the crew were at hand.

Stepping to the door of the tent, he saw the strange group approaching.

They had not taken Harvey from the canoe, but had let him lie there, while they lifted the canoe and carried it along, two boys at either end, bearing the weight with a stick stretched underneath to support it.

Alongside plodded Bob, holding to the gunwale, to a.s.sist in steadying it.

They approached and set the canoe down, just outside the tent door.

"Get his clothes off quick, now," cried Tom. "I have the hot blankets ready to wrap him in, and some coffee when he is able to take it."

In a twinkling Harvey was stripped and rolled snugly in the blankets, while Tom busied himself in rushing up with cloths heated hot, and applying them to the soles of his feet. After a time he lifted Harvey up and poured a few spoonfuls of the coffee down his throat. This seemed to revive Harvey, for he opened his eyes, muttered something that was unintelligible, and sank back to sleep.

"He's all right now," said Tom, pa.s.sing his hand over Harvey. "He is getting warm again. He'll be all right now when he gets his sleep out."

Tom and Bob were thoroughly tired. They lay stretched out before the fire on blankets for a time, too weary to more than barely reply to the questions of the crew as to the mishap that had befallen Harvey.

Presently Tom rose up and said: "Well, Bob, it's late, and we've got to be getting started or we'll never get back to the cottage."

"We shall be down again to-morrow to see how Harvey is," he added, turning to the crew, who sat a little apart, somewhat abashed by the turn of affairs and the consciousness of the debt of grat.i.tude they now owed to the boys whom they had wronged. "We'll send a doctor down if you want us to, but I don't think there's any need of it. He'll be all right by morning. Good night."

They were about taking their departure when Harvey struggled for a moment with the clothing that enveloped him, lifted his head slightly from the ground, and said, weakly, "Hold on."

"What is it?" asked Tom, as they stepped inside the tent again and sat down beside him.

"Don't go," said Harvey, huskily. "Please don't go. I want you to stay here to-night,-that is, if you will. I've-I've got something-something to say to you in the morning. I can't say it now. I'm too weak. But I want the crew to hear it in the morning."

Tom and Bob looked at each other in astonishment. Then they nodded, and Tom replied to Harvey:

"All right, Jack. We'll stay. Go to sleep now. You're all right."

The crew quickly spread some boughs for them, and brought more blankets from the yacht.

"Tom," said Bob, as they stood alone for a moment, while the crew were busily engaged, "it looks like our revenge."

And then, before they had the blankets half-wrapped about them, they were sinking off to sleep,-to sleep in Harvey's camp, alongside Harvey's crew.

CHAPTER XVI.

A TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP

It was late the following morning when Tom and Bob awoke. The sun was well up, and the light was streaming into the tent. Their eyes opened on unfamiliar objects and on strange surroundings.

"It gave me the strangest feeling," said Tom, telling Henry Burns about it some time later. "At first, before I was fully awake, I had forgotten where I was, and I thought I was back in our own tent upon the point.

Then it flashed over me that that was gone, and the next moment I remembered that I was down there in Harvey's camp, and you can't imagine what a queer feeling it gave me."

Harvey and the crew had already arisen, and Tom and Bob could hear the crackling of a fire outside, where they were preparing breakfast. Harvey had awakened apparently as strong as ever, unharmed by his terrible experience of the night before.

"h.e.l.lo, Bob," said Tom, as they looked across the tent at each other. "Do you know where you are? Isn't this a queer sc.r.a.pe? I wonder what will come of it."

"h.e.l.lo," answered Bob, yawning and stretching. "Oh, but how I did sleep.

I feel as though I had slept about a week. I never was so tired in my life. Say, this is queer, isn't it? Who'd ever have thought we would be sleeping here, of all places."

They arose and stepped outside.

The crew paused in their work and looked up, while Harvey advanced to meet his guests.

"h.e.l.lo," he said. "We thought we'd let you have your sleep out. You must have been played out."

"h.e.l.lo," answered Tom and Bob. "We thought you were far worse off than we," continued Bob, "but you seem to have come out of it all right."

Harvey had by this time come up to them. He paused, hesitatingly, for a moment, while his face flushed. Then he put out his hand.

"Will you shake hands with me?" he asked.

Tom and Bob, for answer, extended each his right hand and grasped that of Harvey.

"Thank you," said Harvey, simply. "I don't deserve it, I know."

There may have been the faintest suspicion of moisture about his eyes.

"Come over here," he said, and led the way to a big log that lay near the fire, close by where the crew now stood. "I want to say something to you, and so do the fellows, too."

There was an embarra.s.sing moment as Tom and Bob seated themselves on the log, while the crew stood awkwardly by. They seemed uncertain what to do or say to these brave young fellows, whom they now knew had risked their lives to save their leader. With boy-like reticence, they were too ashamed to speak. Harvey broke the silence.

"The fellows and I don't know hardly what to say to you," he said. "The crew want to tell you how ashamed we all are for the way we have treated you, and they want to thank you for what you did for me; but they can't begin to tell what they feel,-and no more can I,-but they want me to speak for them, too, as I've been their captain in all we've done, as well as aboard the yacht.

"They know what you did for me," continued Harvey. "I told them the whole story this morning. There never was anything braver than what you did, and they all know it now as well as I do. They know you were as near drowning as I was, at the last, and you wouldn't give up and let me go, but stuck to me till the end, and couldn't have saved your own lives if there had been another rod to go.

"I wouldn't be here now, if it wasn't for you-"

"Well, you would have done the same for us, and so would the crew," said Tom, eager to spare the other's mortification as much as possible, and feeling his heart kindling toward his late enemy.

"I don't know whether I should or not," replied Harvey. "I don't think I'm so much of a coward, even if I _have_ been doing things that look that way. But that doesn't make our position any the better. It isn't what we would have done for you in the same danger that counts. It's what we have been doing to you ever since you landed on the island that makes our case so bad."

"I tell you," Harvey exclaimed, vehemently, as he arose from the log, "we've been a lot of fools and we've been thinking all the time that we were smart. It just came to me like a flash, as I thought I was going down out there, all the mean things I've been doing and what a fool I've been. I knew it all the time, too, I guess, only I didn't care. But you fellows have just brought it home to us hard, and we are going to try to square things up all that we can.