One would have supposed that Wilfred, discredited and sensitive though he was, would have joined the excited throng which he saw running shoreward from the pavilion and from all the neighboring tents and cabins. For what he saw in the middle of the darkening lake was enough to obliterate animosity. Surely in those terrible moments they would not trouble themselves to look on him askance. But he remained apart as he had always done, an isolated figure on the shore, as clamorous, excited scouts by the dozen crowded on springboard and shore. Out in the middle of the lake something was wrong. In the gathering darkness, Wilfred could see what he thought to be the camp launch, and a voice, made almost inaudible by the adverse wind, was calling. It seemed as if it came from beyond the bordering mountains though he knew it must come from the lake. Everything was hazy and the launch looked like the specter of a launch haunting the troubled waters.
Then he noticed something else drifting rapidly nearer by. Dumbfounded, he saw it to be the landing float which must have slipped its moorings. With it were half a dozen rowboats banging against each other, their chains clanking. The mass was being carried headlong across the lake. A quick inquiring glance showed Wilfred that not a single boat was at the shore.
He was about two hundred feet alongshore from where the increasing crowd was; the scene was one of the wildest panic. From the excited talk he surmised that Hervey Willetts, the most notorious of the “independents” was about to pay the fatal penalty for taking the launch without permission.
“Run along the shore, you’ll find a boat somewhere!” an excited voice called.
“Lash a half a dozen planks together; get some rope, some of you fellows—quick! Get a couple of oars!”
“We can scull to the float.”
“Scull nothing; look at it, it’s driving toward East Cove. We’ll scull right for the launch!”
“Here, you kids, don’t try to run around to the cove, you’ll never make it. Get more rope and pull that other plank loose—hurry up! The wind will help us.”
Far across the water in the deepening, misty twilight, arose the voice, robbed of its purport by the adverse wind. And close at hand, among the frantic group, a clear cut, commanding voice.
“Slip the rope under that next plank—that’s right—now tie it—quick—and lash it to this one—so! Now pull the whole business around.”
Amid all this excitement the lone figure that stood apart beheld a striking spectacle. A form, black and ghostly, stood barely outlined at the end of the diving-board.
“Don’t try that,” an authoritative voice called. But it was too late. The figure went splashing into the angry water. Little did Wilfred dream that this was the boy who had won the radio set in the Mary Temple swimming contest. The voice out on the lake, strained in its frantic last appeal, could be heard now.
“Heeeelp! Heeeelp!”
Rem............