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The High School Boys' Fishing Trip, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 9. The Start Of A Bad Night |
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_ CHAPTER IX. THE START OF A BAD NIGHT Without noise, leaving barely a ripple behind, that head sank from view. It had vanished in an instant before the eyes of the two thoroughly startled high school boys. "He's drowning now!" gasped Dan, as the head failed to bob up again into view. "Oh, Tom, we must save him!" "Wait!" said Reade, in a quivering voice. His eyes expressed uncertainty as to how he should act. "But he's drowning. You see, he hasn't come up again!" Dalzell insisted. "Drowning---in water shallow enough for small bushes to grow from the bottom?" demanded Reade. "Of course not! But what does it mean---and why didn't the fellow speak?" "Perhaps---i---i---it was a---dead man," suggested Dalzell. "That's what I'm trying to figure out," replied Reade. "I---I almost thought I saw the man's eyelids move." "I thought so, too," agreed Dan, "but now I'm inclined to believe that we didn't. Wait! I'm going to get close to the bushes." Dan drove the paddle into the water a few times, bringing the canoe up alongside the bushes, when it was seen that these were standing up from a square framework of wood. "Now, what do you think of that?" asked Reade in perplexity. "These are freshly cut bushes, that have been fastened to this frame to-day. The frame will float wherever wind or current may take it. I thought this was shallow water. I'll soon know." Tom had, among his tackle, a line with a sinker attached. He tossed the sinker over the side of the canoe, paying out the line until the sinker touched bottom. Then he pulled the line in again, carefully measuring by his arm as much of the line as was wet. "Danny," he announced solemnly, "at this point the water is from twenty-seven to thirty feet deep." "Then that man did drown!" breathed Dalzell, his face as white as chalk. "Of course he did," Tom agreed, "provided he was alive when we saw him." "But he had to be alive," protested Dan, "or else he couldn't have nailed the framework together and decorated it with branches from bushes." "That is, if the man we saw made the frame," propounded Reade in a very solemn voice. It was a shock to both of them. The whole incident had been uncanny and unreal, but the horror of that haggard, haunting face was still strong upon both of the beholders. "Tom, we simply must get off our clothes and dive to see what we can do to find that poor fellow," urged Dalzell. "All right," assented Reade. "I'll do all the diving myself, Danny, if you'll take command and give your orders. Where shall I dive? The bushes have already shifted position. We're floating away from the spot, too. Just where do you want me to make the first dive?" "I don't know," Dan Dalzell confessed. "The whole affair has given me the creeps, I think." "I know it has done that to me," smiled Tom unsteadily. "Whew! I'll dream of that face to-night---all night long! Dan, there seems to be just about one chance in a thousand that that man will reach shore. Let's keep the craft headed to the shore, and watch for some minutes to come. At the same time, if we see a sign of the poor fellow, we'll swim to him, or paddle to him as fast as we know how." Both boys knew, inwardly, that they would be heartily glad to get away from what seemed plainly to them to be a haunted spot. Yet neither cared to admit his dread to the other. So, talking rather busily, they remained on the spot for fully another ten minutes. "We won't see anything come out of the water now," Tom asserted at last. "Even if we do, it will be a drowned man." "I guess we may as well get back to camp," Danny agreed. "Yet it is going to be an awfully creepy night for all of us, with this weird mystery of the lake on our minds." "Don't paddle yet," begged Tom. "I'll give a hail, and see if that brings any answer." Raising his voice, Reade shouted lustily: "Hello, there, friend? Are you safe? Want any help?" "Anything we can do for you, friend?" bawled Dan Dalzell, in his most resonant tone. Only the mocking echoes of their own questions came back to them. "Beat the water with the paddle. Danny," advised Reade after they had waited for some moments. "We've more than a mile to go. Whip up the water. If you get tired, pass the paddle back to me." "I'm not sorry to get away from that place," breathed Dalzell, after at least a hundred lusty strokes. "Nor I," confessed Reade. "I'm beginning to get a headache already from trying to figure out what it all meant. Danny, describe that haunting face just as you saw it." "Ugh! I hate to think about it again," protested Dalzell. "You'll think about it more than once," retorted Tom. "You won't be able to help that, I promise you. So go ahead and describe the face as you saw it." Dan did so, Tom listening attentively. "Then that wasn't a case of imagination," Tom declared gravely. "If we had imagined it, each would have seen a different face. But the face that you describe, Danny, is the one that I also saw. Pass back the paddle, please. I want a little exercise." Tom still had the paddle when he shot the canoe in close to the camp. "Any luck?" called Dave, who had already returned with a string of perch. "Catch any bass?" was Dick's question. "Did you even see anything?" laughed Greg Holmes. "Did we see anything?" groaned Tom, as he sent the canoe's prow to land. "Danny looks as though he had been seeing all sorts of things," chuckled Hazelton, as Dalzell stepped ashore. "Don't ask me," gasped Danny Grin, with a shudder. At this the faces of those who had remained behind sobered instantly. "You won't eat any supper, if we tell you," Tom declared, as he came ashore while Dave held the painter of the canoe. "I'll accept that challenge," laughed Prescott, as Dave and Tom drew the collapsible canoe up on shore. "Fire away as soon as you're ready, Mr. Reade." Perch and potatoes were frying, coffee bubbling and Dick had been mixing some kind of boiled pudding that he had learned to make so that it would not cause acute indigestion. "Better wait until after supper," Reade advised. "No; we want the story now," Prescott declared firmly. So Reade told of the strange apparition they had seen, with many additions to the tale from Danny. "I decline to shudder," asserted Dave. "That's just because you've only heard about the face, instead of seeing it," Tom muttered. "Dick, what do you make of the whole affair?" asked Greg. "I only wish I could guess the answer," Prescott made answer solemnly, "but I can't." "What are we going to do about it?" asked Tom Reade. "Let it alone," proposed Harry Hazelton. "No, we won't," said Dick promptly. "Not unless we have to, just because of inability to find out anything. Fellows, it's too late to try to do anything in the darkness to-night. If the man were drowned, we couldn't help him, anyway. But we'll go over there to-morrow and try to find out whether there is any other answer to the riddle." "You won't need any supper to-night, anyway," declared Reade, in a tone of grim triumph. "That is where you lose," Prescott answered quietly. "You'll be hungry, too, Tom, when the food goes on the table." However, neither Reade nor Danny Grin ate very heartily that evening. Every few moments the haunting face rose before their memories. It proved a dull evening, too, in camp. The sky became overcast. It looked so much like rain that Dick & Co. voted in favor of retiring early. First of all, however, the canoe was hauled into the tent for safety. Then, with only one lantern burning dimly, six sturdy but wondering high school boys rolled themselves in their blankets. Just as five of them were dozing off uneasily Dave Darrin's voice sounded quietly: "That thing couldn't have been a joke rigged up on us, could it?" "A joke?" rumbled Reade. "No, sir! That face was real enough to suit the most particular individual. No, sir; that face wasn't a joke, nor did the face look as though the man to whom it belonged had ever heard a joke in all his life." "Suppose you fellows shut up until the sun is shining again," proposed Danny Grin, who had been fidgeting restlessly in his blanket. "That's right," agreed Dick blandly. "All ghost stories ought to be told in the broad daylight." "Just the same-----" Tom began. "Shut up---_please_!" came a chorus of protest. All was quiet after that. Hours must have passed. All the boys were sleeping at least fairly well when air and earth shook with a mighty explosion. Instantly six bewildered high school boys leaped to their feet in alarm. _ |
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