"Ain't you nearly done all that stuff?" demanded an impatient voice, and there was a rocking motion to the boat; after which a very red face surmounted by a shock of fiery hair, now well plastered down, hove in sight. "Hey! somebody get a move on, and give me a hand. I'm soaked through and through, and I tell you my clothes weigh nigh on three tons."
The five boys pretended to be hardly able to believe their eyes. They threw up their hands, and stared hard at the apparition.
"Why, sure, I believe it's our long lost chum, Bumpus!" gasped Giraffe.
"Mebbe it's his ghost come back to haunt us the rest o' out lives. Mebbe we better knock him on the head; they say that's the only sure way to settle spooks," and as Step Hen said this terrible thing, he started to pick up the long-handled boat book.
"No, you don't, Step Hen!" shrilled Bumpus, who was really frightened as long as he remained in the water, for he believed it must be a mile deep so far out from land. "You just put that pole down, and get hold of my arm here. I tell you I'm tired of being in soak so long, and I want to come aboard so's to get some dry duds on. Make 'em behave, Thad, can't you? I'm getting weak holding on here all this while; and pretty soon I'll have to let go. Then there will be a ghost, sure, to haunt this crowd. Ain't you coming to assist a fellow scout in distress?"
Realizing that the joke had gone far enough the scout-master himself sprang forward to give poor Bumpus the assistance he craved.
There was no lack of help after that, Step Hen even made use of the boat hook to take hold of some part of the wet scout's clothes; and with a mighty "heave-o!" they dragged him, puffing, and shedding gallons of water, on to the deck of the stalled power-boat. Here he lay for a minute or two "to drain," as Giraffe remarked, but soon feeling chilled, Bumpus began to hunt for his clothes-bag in order to get something dry to put on.
As he did not have a complete outfit for a change, the other fellows helped out; but while his soaked khaki suit was drying, hanging here and there so the sun could do the business, the fat scout presented a laughable appearance, since of course none of the things that had been so generously loaned him began to fit his stout figure.
However, since Bumpus was by nature a jolly chap, he quickly saw the humor of the thing. This was after he had become warmed up fairly well, when he could sit and watch those who were tinkering with the broken engine, and tell what his feelings were as he sprang so hurriedly over into the big lake.
It made him shiver, though, to look around at that sea of water, and realize what an exceedingly reckless boy he had been.