He presently detected a certain motion of the water at a point a little to one side of his course, and in a moment steered his boat for that place, but not at too great speed.
He had calculated right, for when the boy came up Jack was within two feet of him and quickly made up the distance, reached out, caught him under the arms, and, by a dexterous move, lifted him into the boat.
The boy was nearly exhausted, but upon Jack's speaking cheerily to him, he revived sufficiently to assist his rescuer, and his getting into the boat was attended with no accident.
He collapsed when he was in, however, and Jack put for the shore at a rapid pace, a number of the boys being ready to take the fainting boy out as they came up the shelving beach.
"Why didn't you go to the boy's aid, Herring?" asked Percival, as the bully came in. "Couldn't you see that he had a cramp?"
"I have had that trick played on me before," retorted Herring in a surly tone. "How was I to know that it was real?"
"Our boys do not resort to such tricks?" declared the leader of the visiting team warmly, "and I do not think that the Hilltop boys in general can be accused of doing so."
"I don't know what you fellows do," said the other in the same surly tone, "because I have seen very little of you, but I know that that trick has been worked on me before, and I was prepared for anything. That's why I did not go to help him. Why didn't his own chum do it?"
"You were nearer," said Dick, and then he went away to see how the other boy was coming along.
Fortunately, he was out of danger, and was doing very well so that it was not necessary to stop the games, but Herring did not again have anything to do and shortly left the camp, and went off into the woods with Holt, leaving Merritt to finish the final of the flat race, losing to the boys from the other camp.