Chapter XIII: A Serious Adventure

Wyn Mallory was a pretty cool-headed girl; nor was this the first time she had been in an accident of this nature.

Naturally, in learning to handle the light cedar craft as expertly as they did, the members of the Go-Ahead Club had much experience. While the weather was good the girls plied their paddles up and down the Wintinooski, but seldom was the river as rough as this open lake in which Wyn and Bessie Lavine had been so unexpectedly overturned.

"Oh! am I not the unluckiest girl that--that ever happened?" wailed Bess, when she came up puffing.

"N-o-no more than _I_, Bess," stammered Wyn.

"Get your canoe, Wyn!" cried Bess.

"Oh, yes; but we can't turn them over in this sea. Oh! isn't that horrid!" as another miniature wave slapped the captain of the club in the face and rolled her companion completely over.

Bess lost her grip on her canoe. The latter floated beyond her reach while Wyn was striving to get her friend to the surface again.

"Why! we're going to be drowned!" shrieked Bess, suddenly horror-stricken.

"Don't you _dare_ lose your nerve," commanded Wynifred. "If we lose courage we certainly will be lost."

"Oh, but, Wyn----"

"Oh, but, Bess! Don't you dare. Here! get hold of the keel of my canoe."

"But it won't bear us both up," groaned Bessie Lavine.

"It's got to," declared Wyn. "Have courage; don't be afraid."

"You needn't try to tell me you're not afraid yourself, Wyn Mallory!" chattered her friend.

"Of course I am, dear; but I mean, don't lose your head because you _are_ afraid," said Wyn. "Come, now! Paddle with one hand and cling to the keel with the other. I'll do the same."

"Oh, dear, me! if we were only not so far from the shore," groaned Bess.

"Somebody may see us and come to our help," said Wyn, with more confidence in her tone than she really felt.

"The canoes couldn't live in this gale."

"It's only a squall."

"That's all very well; but they wouldn't dare to start out for us from Green Knoll."

"But the boys----"

"Their camp isn't in sight of this place, Wyn," moaned Bess. "Oh! we _will_ be drowned."

But Wyn had another hope. She remembered, just before the overturn, that she had caught a glimpse of the red and yellow cottage behind Jarley's Landing.

"Oh, Bess!" she gasped. "Perhaps Mr. Jarley will see us. Perhaps Polly----"

Another slapping wave came and rolled them and the canoe over. The frail craft came keel up, level full of water. The least weight upon it now would send it to the bottom of the lake.

"Oh, oh!" shrieked Bess, when she found her voice. "What shall we do now?"

They could both swim; but the lake was rough. The sudden and spiteful squall had torn up the surface for many yards around. Yet, as they rose upon one of the waves, they saw the sun shining boldly in the westward. The squall was scurrying away.

"Come on! we've got to swim," urged Wyn.

"That's so hard," wailed Bess, but striking out, nevertheless, in the way she had been so well taught by the instructor in Denton. All these girls had been trained in the public school baths.

"There's the other canoe," said Wyn, hopefully.

"But we--we don't want to go that way," gasped Bess. "It's away from land."

Now Wyn knew very well that they had scarcely a chance of swimming to the distant shore. In ordinarily calm weather--yes; but in this rough sea, and hampered as they were by their bloomers and other clothing--no.

The two girls swam close together, but Wyn dared not offer her comrade help. She wanted to, but she feared that if she did so Bess would break down and become helpless entirely; and Wyn hoped they would get much farther inshore before that happened.

The squall had quite gone over and the sun began to shine. It seemed a cruel thing--to drown out there in the sunlight. And yet the buffeting little waves, kicked up by the wind-flaw, were so hard to swim through.

Had the waves been of a really serious size the struggle would have been less difficult for the two girls. They could have ridden over the big waves and managed to keep their heads above water; but every once in a while a cross wavelet would slap their faces, and every time one did so Bess managed to get a mouthful of water.

"Oh! what will papa do?" moaned Bess.

And Wyn knew what the poor girl meant. She was her father's close companion and chum. The other girls in the Lavine family were smaller and their mother was devoted to them; but Bess and Mr. Lavine were pals all the time.

Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree.

Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore.

Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her--bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away.

Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril.

And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them?

In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue.