“Mr. Hutt may have looked around and catched the frown on me brow; I’m towld I have a tumble exprission when I’m mad.”
“It must be true to cause them thus to leap into clear spring water, knowing it meant the coldest kind of a bath. No, Mike,” added the doctor gravely, “they saw something in the water that threw them into fits. What could it be?”
This was the only theory possible and yet it simply deepened the mystery. What could there be in the clear cool waters of Gosling Lake, besides the different species of ordinary fishes that are taken with hook and line? To Mike and the doctor the puzzle was more inexplainable than before.
One conclusion, however, was warranted by what had occurred: if the tramps had seen something which terrified them beyond imagination, what was to prevent the man and youth from gaining a sight of the same frightful object whatever it might be?
Now, while it cannot be denied that Dr. Spellman and Mike Murphy were more than ordinarily brave, yet they felt a shrinking in stealing up to the spot where the tramps had dived from the other canoe. It was their ignorance of the character of the peril which affected them more than any tangible danger could have done.
The doctor dipped his paddle in the water and gently swayed it. The boat moved slowly toward the other canoe, drifting like an eggshell over the placid surface. In leaping overboard, Buzby Biggs had flung the paddle from him and it was seen floating a couple of rods distant from the boat. Very slowly the doctor advanced until Mike leaned over and lifted the implement into their craft. Then the man sheered his boat beside the other and Mike, tossing the paddle into it, held it steady, and sat down.
“Now, docther, we can manage it, I’m thinking,” remarked the youth, looking up into the face that it seemed to him had gone a little pale.
“Can you find anything to explain the fright of the tramps, Mike?”
Both peered into the clear water, whose depth was too great for them to see the bottom, but nothing rewarded their piercing scrutiny. And right here a fact must be admitted which was not discreditable to either of them. The breath of air that sighed over the lake had swept the empty canoe fully a hundred feet from whence it was at the moment Buzby Biggs dived overboard. It followed, therefore, that when Mike and the doctor peered into the pellucid depths, it was not at the spot where the tramps had descried something which unnerved them. Moreover, each of the pursuers knew such was the case, but did not try to correct it nor did either drop a hint of his knowledge until some time afterward.
It may be added that had the doctor and his young friend paddled a little farther in the proper direction they would have solved the mystery and been overcome probably by the same panic that had driven the tramps overboard.