Part 18 (1/2)

Without calling his companions, Clay tried to paddle away from the circling current. But to his horror and consternation the canoe was unmanageable. The violent paddle strokes simply made it swing around on its keel.

Then Clay became terribly frightened, and shouted for help. It was indeed high time. He had already drifted to the base of the rock where the whirlpool terminated, and was now swinging back toward the center of the creek.

The appeal for help--though its meaning was not comprehended at first--brought the other boys to Clay's a.s.sistance. That is to say they paddled toward the dangerous spot and were within an ace of getting in the same fix, when Clay frantically warned them back.

”Keep away! keep!” he shouted. ”You must find some other way to help me.”

Ned was the first to grasp the situation. During the last few days he had heard more than one tale about this dreaded whirlpool with its merciless undertow, and now it made him sick and faint to see Clay's peril, and yet be unable to devise a way of helping him.

For so it seemed then. It would be simple folly and madness for the others to trust themselves near the rapacious current; yet how else could help reach the imperiled lad?

The whirlpool was thirty feet in diameter, and while Randy and Nugget were looking on with white, scared faces, and Ned was vainly trying to plan a means of rescue, Clay was slowly drifting around the circle, coming nearer each time to the gurgling funnel in the center--and this in spite of the most strenuous paddling. Each stroke, in fact, only deflected the canoe sideways, as though it had no keel, and increased the risk of upsetting.

None realized the danger more than Clay himself and the horror of those few short minutes--they seemed more like hours--he never forgot.

It was not likely of course that the heavy canoe could be dragged clear under water; the whirlpool was no such gigantic thing as that. But it was absolutely certain that when the canoe reached the funnel shaped aperture in the center it would instantly be overturned, and just as surely Clay would be sucked into the black depths below, and whirled off by the fierce undercurrent with no possible chance of reaching the surface.

This was the awful fate that stared him in the face; and all that while he drifted nearer and nearer the end, crying vainly for help, and beating the frothy water with his paddle.

CHAPTER XV

RANDY'S PROPOSITION

At the moment when Clay's situation seemed most hopeless--and while his horrified companions were looking on with the silence of despair--Nugget leaned forward in his canoe, opened the hatch, and drew out a big ball of cord.

”Ned! Ned!” he shouted eagerly, ”can you do anything with this outline?

I forgot I had it.”

Ned's face flushed with joy, and paddling alongside of Nugget he s.n.a.t.c.hed the cord.

”Follow me to the sh.o.r.e,” he cried, ”and you too, Randy.”

An instant later the three lads were standing on the gravel beach, separated from the whirlpool by no less than sixty or seventy feet.

Ned waved his hand to Clay, and shouted hoa.r.s.ely: ”Fight hard, old fellow! We'll save you in a minute.”

Then turning quickly to his companions he demanded: ”How long is this line?”

”One hundred and forty feet,” answered Nugget. ”The man I bought it from, said so.”

Ned tied the end of it to a ring in the stern of the Pioneer, and ran down the beach, unrolling the ball as he went. Sixty feet away he stopped and cut the cord, then he hurried back with the remainder in his hand. He tied a short stick to the end of the ball, and throwing both into his canoe scrambled after them.

”Now you fellows keep tight hold of that,” he directed, pointing to the cord that lay outstretched on the beach. ”Pay it out as I go, and when I give the word pull with all your might.”

Randy and Nugget began to understand now, and they allowed the line to trail through their fingers as Ned paddled furiously away, heading for a point a little above the whirlpool.

It was a critical and intensely exciting moment. Clay had divined what Ned intended to do, and with this gleam of hope to animate him, he was fighting desperately to keep away from the gurgling hollow which was slowly sucking him into its embrace.