“It was nothing at all,” said Bobby with characteristic modesty. “We simply happened to be nearest and the boat was handy and we piled in and rowed out to them. Any one else would have done the same if the chance had come to them, and you fellows are making too much out of it.”
“That’s all very well,” said Skeets Brody with a grin, “but I notice just the same that when anything has to be done and done in a hurry it’s Bobby Blake that’s ‘Johnny on the spot’.”
CHAPTER III
A CLOSE CALL
Now that the danger was over, the crowd began to melt away, and the boys, who in the excitement had forgotten all about lunch, suddenly remembered that they had been overlooking what was to all of them a duty and to most of them a pleasure and made a break for the dining hall.
Pee Wee was especially remorseful that he had so far forgotten himself.
“Gee!” he observed, as he took out his watch. “Lunch time has been over for more than half an hour. I hope they haven’t cleared the table.”
“If they haven’t, you will when you get to it,” jibed Skeets. “That’s one place where you can be depended on to work.”
“That isn’t work—it’s fun,” admitted Pee Wee, as he started to put his watch back in his pocket. But in his haste it dropped from his fingers and fell with a bang to the ground.
There was an exclamation from the boys, who crowded around Pee Wee as he looked ruefully at the watch, whose crystal had been broken.
“Did it stop?” asked Fred.