Wyn's Camping Days Part 38

Once she had opened her eyes while diving with Bess, and she thought she saw a shadowy something on the bottom of the lake that was neither a boulder nor a waterlogged snag.

She beat her way to the bottom as rapidly as possible; but the light did not follow her. She could see nothing when she opened her eyes. It seemed as though something overshadowed her.

The water was tugging at her; she could not remain below for long. But as she turned to drift up again, her shoulder touched something. She struck out and reached it. But the blow really pushed her away and she floated upward toward the surface.

When she paddled to the raft she was panting, and Frank demanded:

"What's the matter, Wyn? You look as if you'd seen a ghost I believe you stay down too long."

"No," gasped Wyn. "I--I hit something."

"What was it?"

"Why--why, it looked like a wagon. 'Twas something."

"I suppose so!" laughed Frank. "Wagon with a load of hay on it--eh?"

Wyn said nothing more. She sat upon the float, with her knees drawn up and hugged in her brown arms, and thought. The other girls could get nothing out of her.

She wasn't dreaming, however. She was thinking to a serious purpose.

It _had_ looked like a wagon--as much as it looked like anything else. But, of course, she had seen it very dimly. She knew by the touch that it was of wood; but it was no waterlogged tree, although there was slime upon it It was not rough; but smooth.

Of course, it wasn't a wagon. Nor was it a huge box. Neither wagon nor box could have got out here, fifteen or twenty rods off Gannet Island.

Wyn glanced over toward the island and saw that she could look right into the cove where John Jarley had met with his accident. According to the boatman's story, as he went overboard from the motor boat he gave the wheel a twist that should have shot her directly out of the cove toward the middle of the lake.

"But suppose the boat didn't respond, after all, to the twist of the wheel?" Wyn was thinking. "Or, suppose the slant of the rudder was not as great as he supposed?"

She fixed in her mind about the spot where the thing lay she had hit, and then glanced back to the tree on the bank of the cove, that showed the long scar where the branch was torn off.

The line between the two was clear. The motor boat might have run out exactly on that course and missed the wooded point which guarded the entrance to the cove.

Suppose the thing she had hit when she dived was the _Bright Eyes_, Dr. Shelton's lost motor boat?

Wyn was about to shout to the other girls--to call them around her to divulge the idea that had come into her mind--when a hail from the water announced the return of the Busters.

She remembered Mr. Lavine's promise. The two clubs were rivals in this matter. Wouldn't it be a fine thing for the Go-Aheads to own a motor boat all by themselves!

Wyn got up and dived again. But she did not dive toward the mysterious something that she had previously found. She swam stoutly instead to meet the coming Busters.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE NIGHT ALARM

Wyn Mallory had "another mind," as the saying is, before the Go-Aheads left the island and paddled swiftly for their own camp.

She determined not to say anything to her girl friends of the club about the sunken object she had hit under the water. Perhaps it was nothing of any consequence; then they would laugh at her. If it _was_ the lost motor boat, to tell the girls might spread the story farther than it ought to be spread at once.

The Go-Aheads and the Busters were rivals. Mr. Lavine had promised the prize to whichever club found the sunken boat and the box of silver images that Dr. Shelton had accused John Jarley of stealing.

"And it may not be anything, after all," thought Wyn. "It may be a false alarm. Then the _boys_ would have the laugh on us."

To make sure of what she had hit when she dived seemed to Wyn to be the princ.i.p.al thing. And how could she make sure of this without going down specially to examine the mystery?

"How under the sun am I going to do that without the boys seeing me?"

she mused. "And if I take the girls into my confidence they will all want to be there, too--and then sure enough the Busters will catch us at it. Dear me! I don't know what to do--really."

She had half a mind to take Frank into her confidence; but, then, Frank was such a joker. The girls and boys had often talked about hunting for the missing motor boat; but since Mr. Lavine had gone back to Denton, after the regatta, neither club had seriously attempted a search for the _Bright Eyes_.

Polly had told Wyn how men from Meade's Forge had searched for the boat when she was first lost; and some of the bateau men had kept up the search for a long time. Had the motor boat and the silver images been found, Dr. Shelton might have been obliged to pay a large reward to obtain them, for not all of the bateau men of the lake were honest.

"Some of them bothered father a good deal while he was first laid up from his accident, coming by night and trying to get him to give them details which he hadn't given to the other searchers. They thought he must know just where the _Bright Eyes_ was sunk," Polly had told the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. "But they got tired of that after a while. They saw he really did not know what had become of the boat."

Polly! She was the one to confide in, Wyn decided. And the captain of the Go-Ahead Club did not decide upon this until after the other girls in the big tent, and Mrs. Havel, were all asleep. Wyn had been awake an hour wondering what she would better do.

Now, convinced that the boatman's daughter would be a wiser as well as safer confidante at this stage than Frank or the others, Wyn wriggled out of her blanket and seized her bathing suit. It was a beautiful warm night. She was no more afraid of the woods and lake at this hour than she was by daylight.

So she slipped into the suit, got out of the tent without rousing any of the others, selected her own paddle from the heap by the fireplace, and ran barefooted down to the sh.o.r.e. It took but a minute to push her canoe into the water.

She paddled away around the rushes at the end of the strip of sand below the knoll, driving the canoe toward the Jarley Landing. Out of the rushes came a sudden splashing, and some water-fowl, disturbed by her pa.s.sing, spattered deeper into hiding.

Wyn only laughed. The warm, misty night wrapped her around like a cloak; yet there was sufficient light on the surface of the lake for her to see her course a few yards ahead.

_This_ was a real adventure--out in her canoe alone in the dark.

And how fast she made the light craft travel through the still water!

She reached the landing in a very short time. Hopping out, she hauled up the canoe. Was that the water splashing--or was there a sound behind her on the float? Was it a footstep--somebody hastening away?

Now, for the first time, Wyn felt a little tremor. But she was naturally too brave to be particularly disturbed by such a fancy. Who would be lurking about the Jarleys' place at this hour?

So, after a moment, she shook off her doubt, and ran lightly up the float and along the path to the little cottage. She knew Polly's window well enough, and dark as it was, she soon found the spot.

It was shuttered, and the shutter was bolted on the inside; but Wyn scratched upon the blind and after doing so a second time she heard a movement within.

"Polly!" she breathed.

She did not want to awaken Mr. Jarley. She just felt that she could not explain to _him_. Of course, what she had hit under the water might have nothing to do with the sunken boat, and Wyn shrank from disturbing the boatman himself about it.

"Polly!" she exclaimed, again in a whisper, "it's I--Wyn--Wyn Mallory."

At once she heard her friend's voice in return. The shutter opened.

Polly blinked at Wyn through the darkness.