THE NEW SHELL
The calamity had occurred!
Soulful were the wails of Purt Sweet. Not a crumb of food left in the girls' hampers when the party set out through the cave for the middle of Cavern Island was now left to appease Mr. Sweet's appetite.
"The lone pirate has done his fell work, sure enough," Laura Belding declared. "And how hungry he must have been, Nellie! He took that pie you made that none of us could eat."
They all laughed at this hit, for the doctor's daughter was not much of a pastry cook and her lemon pie had been voted the booby prize at luncheon.
"Ooh!" gasped Bobby. "Do you suppose it will kill him? Maybe it will give him such a terrible case of indigestion that he will steal a boat, raise the Jolly Roger again, and go to work making people walk the plank and all that sort of thing—and it will be your fault, Nellie Agnew!"
"I'm only afraid he will eat it and die in terrible agony all alone here," wailed Nellie, who could take a joke as well as give one. "And then his ghost will haunt this end of the island——"
"And Otto will never come here again," said Eve Sitz, poking fun at her brother, who had once been very much afraid of a supposed "haunt" in an old house in Robinson's Woods.
"Never you mind," growled her brother. "There iss ha'ants, undt you will findt oudt so some day—yes!"
But Chet and Lance decided that there were altogether too many prowlers at this end of the island for the party to remain longer. Had they been alone, or with the other boys and no girls, they would surely have made an attempt to find the bewhiskered man whom the Lockwood twins had twice seen disappear into the far entrance of the caverns.
"We ought to report him to the park police," said Nellie Agnew. "He may steal something more than food, next time."
"Leave that to us," said Chet, hastily. "Lance and I will report it in proper time."
But to his chum he whispered: "We don't want any police fooling around here. Suppose they found Short and Long?"
"Right—oh!" agreed Lance. "Hope they'll all forget it and not mention the 'lone pirate' when they get home."
But as events proved, some member of the party mentioned the robbery of the lunch—and in a quarter which brought a search of the eastern end of Cavern Island by the police, a happening that Chet would have given a good deal to avoid.
Now, however, Laura's brother was busy inventing something to interest the party, and yet take them away from this end of the island. The twins were discussing with Eve Sitz the advantages of paddling over rowing, when Chet gave a shout which drew all attention to him instantly.
"Come on!" said the big lad. "Let's get into the boats. We'll have a four-oared race. I'll choose a crew of boys and let Laura choose one of girls. I bet we boys, using my boat, can row around that channel buoy out yonder and back again, before Laura in Lance's boat can do it. And Lance has the lightest boat."
"Done!" cried his sister. "And Lance's boat isn't so much lighter, either. What do you say, girls?"
"Let's show 'em!" cried Bobby. "Let me steer, Laura."
"All right," said Laura.
"And Freddie Ackerman here will steer for us," said Chet.
The crews were quickly chosen. Laura took Eve and the twins with her. Chet had Purt Sweet for Number 2 and pulled stroke himself. Lance arranged the start and was referee.
"When I slap these two sticks together, you're to go," instructed Lance. "The line is right between where I stand here on this rock and the boulder at the far mouth of the cavern. I can see the whole course from here. Now, no bumping at the turn. The boat that has the inside at the buoy must be cleared by the other boat. Don't forget. Are you ready?"
"Oh, wait a minute!" squealed Purt Sweet.
"Yes, hold on!" grunted Chet. "Purt's back hair has come down."
"I weally will have to remove my waistcoat—if you will allow me?" suggested the exquisite. "It might get splashed."
"Go as far as you like," said Lance. "Chuck it ashore here. I'll stand on it so as to see better."
But Purt entrusted the precious waistcoat to one of the girls in another boat, and then the two racing boats were brought into line. The referee asked if they were ready again, and, receiving no contrary answer, shouted:
"Go!"
Chet's crew certainly were a scrub lot, and he did not expect to get much speed out of them; but Otto was a strong oar and had Purt been able to keep the stroke the girls would have made a bad showing to the buoy. Up to that turn the boys kept ahead. Laura set an easy stroke, and found that Eve Sitz was not much inferior to either Dora or Dorothy.
"They're going to beat!" gasped Bobby, swinging with the rowers.
"Don't let them worry you," advised Laura, between her teeth. "The race isn't done until we cross the line."
But in turning the buoy the boys came to grief. Or, rather, Purt Sweet came to grief. He managed to catch a most famous crab, and went over on his back, hitting his head a resounding crack upon the handle of Lance's oar, and waving his long legs in the air.
"Now!" cried Laura, increasing her stroke, and the girls' boat went past their opponents' at a fast clip.
The boys got together again after half a minute; but those thirty seconds told the story of the race. The best the boys could do brought them across the line several lengths behind. And the whole crowd were shouting with laughter over Purt's mishap.
"I wish you'd kept your vest on, Purt," snarled Lance. "There'd been some satisfaction in your getting it wet. My goodness! what a lubber you are in a boat!"
"Weally, I couldn't help it, dear boy," sighed Pretty.
"Just the same, you crabbed the race," grunted Chet. "Now the girls have put it all over us."
And the girls certainly did not spare the boys, and joked at their expense all the way home. But the day was voted a very merry one and Eve and Otto went home in the evening strongly of the opinion that the boys and girls of Central High were a jolly company indeed. Eve promised Laura before she went home that, if she could pass the exams, for junior classes under Principal Sharp, she would surely attend Central High in the fall.
"We've got a splendid bit of athletic timber in Eve Sitz," Laura said, discussing the matter with Jess and the Lockwood twins.
"I hope she'll take up rowing. We can put her into Celia's place on the eight for next year, and then there will be no danger of Hester Grimes getting it," said Jess, who was very outspoken.
"She is better material for stroke than Hester," admitted Laura.
"And enough sight better tempered," Dora observed.
"You know what Hester is doing now?" demanded Jess, in anger.
"What is it?" asked Dorothy.
"She is trying to make the other girls think that the Executive Committee only cares about the eight-oared boat race, and that we'll put up no fight for Central High's entries in the other events."
"She is going to make trouble if she can," declared Dora.
"It isn't so," Laura said, firmly. "There is going to be a fine canoe race—we look to you twins to make good for Central High in that."
"We'll do our best," said the twins together, nodding.
Aunt Dora did not approve of the twins being on the lake so much; in her girlhood "young ladies" of the twins' age did not row, and paddle, and swim, and otherwise imitate boys.
"And I remember that you never were any fun, as a girl, Dora," observed Mr. Lockwood, at the supper table that night, when his sister uttered her usual criticisms of the twins' conduct. "You squealed if you came across a caterpillar, and a garter snake sent you into spasms, and it tired you to walk half a mile, and——"
"Thanks be! I was no tomboy," gasped Aunt Dora.
"Far from it," said the flower lover. "And mother was always having the doctor for you, and you got cold the easiest of any person I ever saw—and do to this day——"
"That is perfectly ridiculous, Lemuel."
"I believe you're sitting in a draught now, Dora," said Mr. Lockwood, quickly.
"Well—I——Achoo! I believe you! I never did see such a draughty place as this house, Lemuel. Ahem! Dora! get me my little knit shawl, will you, child?"
"Oh, yes, Auntie," said one of the twins, as they both rose.
"We're both through our suppers, Auntie," said the other. "We'll bring the shawl."
"Now!" exclaimed the exasperated old lady, when the twins were out of the room. "Which of 'em went for it?"
Her brother shook his head sadly, but his eyes were a-twinkle. "I could not undertake to say, Sister."
It annoyed Aunt Dora very much to hear the girls talk continually of the coming Big Day on Lake Luna and the part the girls of Central High would take in the races. And that next week Dora and Dorothy certainly were full of the new eight-oared shell.
It arrived at the boathouse early in the week, and proved to be the handsomest shell that had ever been launched in Luna waters. Even the wealthy Luna Boat Club did not own a shell like it.
Every other afternoon Mrs. Case allowed the crew to go out for a spin, and Professor Dimp, who coached the boys' crews, looked after the girls' rowing, as well. Some of the girls' parents went down to the shore in the early evening to watch the practice work off Colonel Richard Swayne's estate; but would Aunt Dora go? Only once!
By some inquiry she learned that each member of the crew of eight girls had her own particular seat in the big shell. Dorothy was supposed to row Number 2 and Dora Number 6. But the twins sometimes changed seats—and who was to know the difference?
Not the coach, for Professor Dimp could tell them apart no better than other people. Had Aunt Dora been sure that her namesake rowed in her right place on the evening when she viewed the practice, she would have met the shell at the landing, seized Number 6 oar, and marched her home and locked her into her own room until tickets could be bought for Aunt Dora's home city.
But in their natty-looking costumes the twins looked more alike than ever—were that possible!