"Yes, and get abuse for our trouble," snapped Dick. "I won't do it for one."
"Better come in!" shouted Jack, all except the two bullies being now close to shore, and getting ready to make a landing.
"Mind your business!" shouted Herring. "We know how to look out for ourselves if you don't!"
"I don't like to say 'I told you so,' Jack, but I did," said Percival.
"If anything happens, the fault will be all theirs."
At that moment Colonel Bull, on the bank, blew a tremendous blast on a bugle to call the boats in, and Herring obeyed, knowing that he would be cut short of many of his privileges if he did not.
As it was the two boys narrowly escaped an upset, and Merritt was deathly pale and shaking like a man with the ague when at last they got ashore, none too soon.
The river was white with foam, and it was no place for a small boat with the wind blowing sharply down from the mountains.
"You should have come in with the others," said the colonel sharply when the two bullies landed. "If you take another such risk you will be prohibited from going on the river at all. As it is, you will not go out again to-day."
Herring knew that there was no appeal from this decision, as the colonel was the physical instructor as well as drillmaster, and the doctor never disputed his word in cases which were so palpably just as in this instance.
"Pete wanted to show off," chuckled Billy Manners, "and got come up with. He can't bully the colonel if he can bully the small boys."