The girls screamed, the other goats bleated–while the conquering Billie took a commanding position on a rock and gazed down upon his falling enemy. The latter could not stop. Twice he tried to scramble to his sharp little hoofs, but could not accomplish the feat. So, then, quite helpless, he fell the entire distance and came finally, with a mighty splash, into the deep water under the bank.
“Oh! the poor creature will be drowned!” cried Wyn, in great distress at this catastrophe, although some of the other girls were inclined to laugh, for the goat did look more than a little comical.
He had been battered a good deal and had received a wound upon one side of his face that did not improve his looks at all. And while he had been so lively and pugnacious up on the hillside, now he splashed about in the lake quite helplessly.
The shore of the island just here was altogether too abrupt to afford the unlucky goat any foot-hold. And the goat is not naturally an aquatic animal.
“Come on!” urged Bessie. “Let’s leave him. We can’t do any good here.”
“Of course we can help him,” cried Wyn. “Grab him by the other horn, Frank!”
She had driven her own canoe to the far side of the goat and now seized the beast’s horn. He could not fight in the water and Wyn and Frank slowly guided him along the shore until they reached a sloping piece of beach where he could, at least, get a footing. But he lay down, half in and half out of the water, seemingly exhausted.
“He can never climb that bank,” declared Mina.
“We’ll boost him up, then,” said Frank, with confidence. “Having set out to be twin Good Samaritans, we’ll finish the job properly; eh, Wyn?”
Her friend agreed, laughing, and both girls sprang ashore. They didn’t mind getting a little wet, considering how they were dressed.