They were sweeping the nearer waters of the lake with the search-light whose limited range did not reach the scene of the disaster. And they were bellowing through the megaphone to the anxious rescue party on the raft that they could not pick out the spot; they were engrossed in these futile activities when the search-light picked out something else—something moving slowly, steadily, toward shore. A face, ghastly white in the surrounding blackness, was pictured by the long, groping column of dusky light. Forward it moved toward the shore, slowly, steadily. A slight adjustment of the long column revealed a less ghastly picture, a picture the meaning of which scouts knew well enough. Bobbing alongside the advancing face was a head which seemed to have no connection with the nearby countenance. But the boys of Temple Camp could see in their minds’ eyes what was not visible under the water. That bobbing head was being held above the surface; the unseen body to which it belonged rested upon the buoyant support of an outstretched arm. Nothing held this unconscious form, it just rested easily upon the arm and moved along. There was something uncanny about it; stark and appalling, it seemed to be riding on a spring.
The scouts had read about this sort of thing, this use of a single upholding human arm. But none of them had ever successfully practised it. Now in the darkness of that wild night they saw the feat demonstrated, saw an apparently lifeless form, a dead weight, given the little balance of support to keep it up and guide it through the rough water. And the swimmer seemed hardly embarrassed by this load.
What the gaping crowd did not know was that the arm which acted as a girder was torn and bleeding and throbbing with grievous pain. What they did not know was that the same quiet, unobtrusive will that had caused Wilfred Cowell to stand still in the night and let another escape with the Emblem of the Single Eye, was supporting him now amid storm and darting agony. No search-light could show that. For how could any search-light penetrate such a nature as his?
In a fine impulse, eloquent of admiration, several of the boys waded out chest deep and relieved the swimmer of his burden. That was how it happened that the hero reeled shoreward through the shallow water quite alone. With his torn and bleeding arm hanging at his side, he stumbled, caught himself, and went staggering up upon the grass, then fell heavily to the ground in a dead swoon. And so again, just as when he collapsed before his own home in Bridgeboro, he was only half-conscious of the clamorous voices speaking his nickname as he sank into oblivion on the soft, wet grass.
They spoke it in tones aghast as they crowded about him, “It’s Wandering Willie.” Some of them had not lingered at the other center of interest long enough to learn that it was the young doctor of camp whom Wilfred had saved. Nor to inquire the whys and wherefores of the young man’s unknown excursion in the storm. He was not dead, nor like to die, and the trend of excited interest and curiosity was toward that swelling, clamorous throng that closed in around the prostrate boy whom they had carried into the shelter of the pavilion.
One boy, unscoutlike in his rough determination, elbowed and wriggled his way through the crowd, and braving the frown of Doctor Anderson (who fortunately was visiting camp) kneeled over the dripping, outstretched form.
“Is—he—he alive?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the doctor quietly; “open a space here, you boys; let’s have some air.”
But the boy persisted. “Is—will——”
“I think so, it depends,” said the doctor.
“Do—do you know me?” asked the boy, foolishly addressing the unconscious form; “it’s Wig—just—if you’ll——”
Obedient to a new presence, as they had not been to the doctor, the group fell away to let an............