Chapter XXVI: The Boys to the Rescue

Wyn got into her canoe in sight of Green Knoll Camp, and leaving Polly to work the _Coquette_ home alone, paddled to the shore, drew out the canoe and turned it over on the beach with the six other canoes belonging to the camp, and so stole up the hill and prepared for bed again.

Nobody seemed to have missed her, although it was now two hours after midnight. The captain of the girls' club felt a glow of satisfaction at her heart as she composed herself for sleep. She believed she was going to have a great and happy surprise for the girls of the Go-Ahead Club; and in addition the Jarleys would be relieved of the cloud of suspicion that had hung over Mr. Jarley ever since Dr. Shelton's motor boat was lost.

Wyn slept so late that all the other girls were up and had run down for their morning dip ere Mrs. Havel shook her.

"You must have had your bath very early, Wynnie," said that lady. "Here is your bathing suit all wet."

"Yes, ma'am," responded Wyn, sleepily.

"Now, rouse up. The whole camp is astir," said Mrs. Havel, and Wyn was fully dressed when the other girls came back. There were not too many questions asked, so her secret remained safe.

She became considerably disturbed, however, when the hours of the forenoon passed and she neither heard from nor saw anything of the Jarleys.

Once a big bateau went drifting by and disappeared behind Gannet Island, under a lazy sail and with two men at the long sweeps, or oars. When it was lost to view Wyn was troubled by the thought that it might be the same mysterious craft that had followed the catboat the night before. Had it anchored off the boys' camp now?

So, to calm her own mind, she suggested that they all paddle over to Cave-in-the-Wood Camp and take their luncheon with them.

"Goodness me, Wynifred!" exclaimed Bess, the boy-despiser, "can't you keep away from those boys for a single day?"

"I notice we usually have a good time when the boys are around," returned Wyn, cheerfully.

"Oh, they're quite a 'necessary evil,'" drawled Frank. "But I feel myself like Johnny Bloom's aunt when we get rid of the Busters for a time."

"What about Johnny's aunt?" queried Mina.

"Why, do you know that Johnny belongs to the Scouts and one law of the Scouts is that they shall each do something for somebody each day to make the said somebody happy."

"Rather involved in your English, Miss, but we understand you," said Grace.

"So far," agreed Percy Havel. "But where do Johnny Bloom and his aunt come in?"

"Why, any day he can't think of any other kindness to render his friends," chuckled Frankie, "he goes to see his aunt. She is so glad when he goes home again--she detests boys--that Johnny feels all the thrill of having performed a good deed."

"Now, Frank!" laughed Wyn, "you know it isn't as bad as all _that_."

"Yes, it is," chuckled Frankie. "You don't know Johnny Bloom as well as his neighbors do. He lives on my street."

"Humph! most boys are just as bad," declared Bess. "Just the same, if Wyn says 'Gannet Island' I reckon we'll all have to go."

"And we'll have some fun diving," Grace Hedges declared. "I wish we had a diving float over here."

Mrs. Havel preferred to remain at the camp and the six girls were a very hilarious party as they set forth in their canoes and fresh bathing suits for the island.

By this time every member of the Go-Ahead Club was as brown as a berry, inured to exposure in the sun, and enjoying the outdoor life of woods and lake to the full.

Mina's timidity had worn off, Percy was not so "finicky" in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people's feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it seemed a girl could be. Their independent, busy life on Green Knoll was doing them all a world of good.

As the little squadron of canoes drew near to the easterly end of the Island the girls were suddenly excited by a great disturbance in the bushes on the hill above them. This end of the island was exceedingly steep and rocky.

"Oh, what's that?" cried Mina, as some object flashed into view for a moment and then disappeared.

"It's one of the goats," squealed Frankie.

Gannet Island was grazed by a good-sized herd of goats, but they remained mostly at this end and kept away from the boys' camp at the other. The girls had seldom seen any of the herd, although they had heard the kids bleating now and then, and the boys had described the old rams and how ugly they were.

Here, right above them, was going on a striking domestic wrangle, for in a moment they saw that two of the rams were having a set-to among the bushes on the side-hill, while several mild-eyed Nannies and their progeny looked on.

The rams would back away a little in the brush and then charge each other. When their hard horns collided, they rang like steel, and several times the antagonists were both overborne by the shock and rolled upon the ground.

"What a place for a fight!" exclaimed Frank. "What do you know about _that_, girls?"

"It's a shame," quavered Mina. "Somebody ought to separate them."

"Sure! I vote that you go right up and do so, Miss Everett," said Grace, briskly.

However, Frank's criticism of the judgment of the combating goats was correct. It was no place for a fair fight. One of the animals happened to get "up hill" and at the next charge the lower goat was lifted completely off its feet and came tumbling down the steep descent with the speed of an avalanche.

The girls screamed, the other goats bleated--while the conquering Billie took a commanding position on a rock and gazed down upon his falling enemy. The latter could not stop. Twice he tried to scramble to his sharp little hoofs, but could not accomplish the feat. So, then, quite helpless, he fell the entire distance and came finally, with a mighty splash, into the deep water under the bank.

"Oh! the poor creature will be drowned!" cried Wyn, in great distress at this catastrophe, although some of the other girls were inclined to laugh, for the goat _did_ look more than a little comical.

He had been battered a good deal and had received a wound upon one side of his face that did not improve his looks at all. And while he had been so lively and pugnacious up on the hillside, now he splashed about in the lake quite helplessly.

The shore of the island just here was altogether too abrupt to afford the unlucky goat any foot-hold. And the goat is not naturally an aquatic animal.

"Come on!" urged Bessie. "Let's leave him. We can't do any good here."

"Of course we can help him," cried Wyn. "Grab him by the other horn, Frank!"

She had driven her own canoe to the far side of the goat and now seized the beast's horn. He could not fight in the water and Wyn and Frank slowly guided him along the shore until they reached a sloping piece of beach where he could, at least, get a footing. But he lay down, half in and half out of the water, seemingly exhausted.

"He can never climb that bank," declared Mina.

"We'll boost him up, then," said Frank, with confidence. "Having set out to be twin Good Samaritans, we'll finish the job properly; eh, Wyn?"

Her friend agreed, laughing, and both girls sprang ashore. They didn't mind getting a little wet, considering how they were dressed.

The goat bleated forlornly as they seized upon him; he was quite all the two girls could lift, and they actually had to drag him up the steeper part of the hill by his legs.

Their friends below chaffed them a good deal, for it was a ridiculous sight. Soon, however, Wyn and Frank got their awkward burden to the mouth of an easily sloping gully, that led toward the interior of the island. As soon as he could, the animal scrambled upon his feet.

Once firmly set, however, this ungrateful goat's temper changed most surprisingly. Or he may have felt that his dignity had been ruffled by the treatment he had received at the hands of his rescuers.

So he began stamping his little sharp hoofs and lowered his head, shaking the latter threateningly.

"What did I tell you?" called Bess, from below. "Next you two sillies know he'll butt you."

"Oh, come along, Wyn!" gasped Frankie. "Plague the goat, anyway!" as she dodged the enraged animal's first charge.

The goat was headed up the gully, away from the shore, or he might have gone head first into the lake again. As the girls escaped him, Wyn, laughing immoderately, looked back. A big beech tree cropped out of the bank not far away, and under this tree she descried a figure lying.

"Oh, Frank!" she cried.

Her friend turned and saw the figure, too.

"Oh, Wyn!"

Their ejaculations seemed to have attracted Mr. William Goat's attention to the same reclining figure. Outstretched upon the sward, with a large handkerchief over his face as a protection from gnats and other insects, and with his fat fingers interlaced across what Dave Shepard wickedly termed his chum's "bow-window," lay the quite unconscious Tubby Blaisdell.

"Tubby!" shrieked the girls in chorus.

The fat boy sat up as though a spring had been released. The handkerchief was still over his face, and he grunted blindly.

It was a challenge to Mr. Goat. He charged. Amid the screams of the girls the goat hurtled through the air, all four feet gathered beneath him, and landed head-and-horns in the middle of poor Tubby's waistcoat!

It wasn't a very big goat. 'Twas lucky for Master Blaisdell that this was so. Tubby went back with an awful grunt, heels in the air, and the goat turned a complete somersault. But the latter scrambled to his feet a whole lot quicker than did Tubby.

"Run--run, Tubby!" shrieked Frank.

"Look out for him, Ralph!" cried Wyn.

Back the goat came. This time he took Master Blaisdell from the rear and butted him so hard that he actually seemed to lift the fat boy to his feet.

The youth had scratched the handkerchief from his face, and now could see the enemy. Tubby had emitted nothing but a series of excruciating grunts; but now, when he saw the goat making ready for another charge, he met the animal with a yell, leaping into the air with his legs a-straddle, so that the Billie ran between them, and then Tubby footed it up the gully as fast as he could travel.

The goat, headed down hill again, saw his old enemies, the two girls, and made as though to attack them. Wyn and Frank, almost dead with laughter, managed to roll down the bank and so get out of the erratic goat's sight. The other girls had only heard the noise of the conflict, and did not understand; nor could Wyn and Frankie explain when they first scrambled into their canoes.

"Poor Tubby! Poor Tubby!" was all Wyn could say. "Let's paddle around to the boys' camp. He's run for home."

"It was a home run, all right!" gasped Frank.

But three minutes later, when the canoes got into the cove where Polly's father had met with his accident in the _Bright Eyes_, Wyn suddenly found something more serious than Tubby Blaisdell's experience to worry about. There was the big bateau, its sail furled, almost over the spot where Wyn and Polly were sure the lost motor boat lay!

"Oh, dear me!" cried Bess. "Now we can't have any fun on the raft. Those men will be in our way. What do you suppose they are poking around there in the water with those poles for?"

Wyn began to paddle fast. She shot ahead of the other girls and aimed directly for the bit of beach on which the boys' canoes were drawn.

The noise and laughter up at the camp assured her that Tubby had arrived and that all the Busters were at home. Wyn had made up her mind quickly that, if she must, she would rather take the boys into her confidence about the sunken boat than let those bateau men find it.

"Boys! Dave!" she hailed them from the water.

Young Shepard appeared at once and, seeing Wyn, ran down to the shore.

"Will you help us?" gasped Wyn. "Quick! get the boys! Move your diving float where I tell you; those men will find it first, if you don't."

"Find what?" demanded Dave. "Are you sensible, Wynnie?"

The explanation tumbled out of Wyn Mallory's lips then in rather a jumbled fashion; but Dave understood. He turned and gave the view-halloa for his mates. They all tumbled down the bank save Tubby.

"Get a move on, fellows," commanded the leader of the Busters. "We've got to move that raft. Wyn will tell us where. And later we'll tell you _why_. But the word is now: Look sharp!"