“That man must be her father,” went on Jack. “She said he was going to call at Clearwater Hall to see her. Come on, boys! We’ve got to get to them before the aeroplane pulls them under. Hurry! Row for all you’re worth!”
As he uttered the last words Jack sank down on the seat and grasped tight hold of the oar which had almost gotten away from him in his excitement. The others also fell to rowing, and away they pulled for the sinking aeroplane which was less than two hundred feet away. Soon the other rowboat followed.
And while the four Rover boys and their chums are going to the rescue of those in peril, it may be as well for me to state as briefly as possible who the boys were and how they came to be in their present situation. Of course, those who have read the previous volumes of this series will need no special introduction to the Rovers, and they can skip these pages if they so desire.
In the first volume of the line, entitled “The Rover Boys at School,” I introduced three brothers, Dick, Tom and Sam Rover and told how they were sent to Putnam Hall Military Academy where they had a number of adventures and where they made great friends of three other students, Larry Colby, Songbird Powell, and Fred Garrison.
Passing from Putnam Hall, these three brothers next attended Brill College, and then went into business in New York City by organizing The Rover Company with offices on Wall Street.
During their schoolboy days the three lads had made the acquaintanceship of three nice girls, Dora Stanhope and her cousins Nellie and Grace Laning. Shortly after the three couples were married and settled down in connecting houses on Riverside Drive, New York City. As the result of his marriage Dick Rover became the father of a son, Jack, and a daughter named Martha. Sam Rover was blessed with a girl called Mary, and then a son who was christened Fred. At about this same time Tom Rover’s wife, Nellie, came forward with a lively pair of twin boys, who were named Anderson and Randolph after their grandfather and their great-uncle. Andy and Randy, as they were always called, were full of fun, coming naturally by this, as their father had been as full of life as any lad could well be.
Being brought up side by side, the younger generation of Rover boys, as well as the girls, lived together very much as one large family. But soon the boys began to cut up to such an extent that it was decided to send them to some strict boarding school.
About that time Larry Colby, the chum of the older Rovers, had opened Colby Hall, a military academy patterned somewhat after the national institution at West Point. This was considered just the institution for the younger generation, and in the first volume the Second Series, entitled “The Rover Boys at Colby Hall,” I related how Jack, Fred and Andy and Randy journeyed to that institution of learning and how they made a number of warm friends and also defeated several of their enemies.
The military school was located about half a mile from Haven Point, a small town on Clearwater Lake close to where the Rick Rack River ran into that body of water. The school consisted of a large stone building facing the river and close by was a smaller building occupied by Colonel Colby and his family and some of the professors, and not far away were a gymnasium, a boathouse, and several necessary buildings.
On arriving at Colby Hall the four Rovers found several of their friends already there, including Spouter Powell and Gif Garrison, the sons of their fathers’ old classmates.