“I hope you’re right, Frankland, but I very much fear otherwise. I can’t conceive of an explanation of his disappearance unless some serious accident has befallen him. But you go and find Pepper and have him get the auto ready, Mr. Porter; and, Mr. Frankland, you get a couple of long-handled rakes and some lanterns. I’ll get my medical and surgical cases and we’ll be prepared for any emergency.”
Pepper was soon found and instructed. A few words of explanation served to put speed in his actions, and in fifteen minutes the large touring car was backed out of the garage.
No unnecessary delay was permitted by the doctor. The medical and surgical cases were put aboard and all climbed in. Mr. Frankland, with two rakes in hand, sat behind with Mr. Porter, who had charge of the lanterns, and Dr. Byrd took a seat in front with the chauffeur.
Pepperill Humphrey served as chauffeur as well as janitor at Lakefarm Institute. He was a wise old man, always ready with “home-remedy” advice and droll humor. He could tell “bad boys” what was going to become of them more forebodingly, some said, than could any other forecaster of human events.
He was peculiarly quiet on the present occasion. After receiving a twenty-word explanation from Mr. Frankland, he asked one or two questions and then said nothing more. His silence might have been construed variously. He was fond of Hal, as was everybody else at the school, and possibly he was stunned at the news received. But he was observed several times to nod his head vigorously and to mutter in a very positive manner.
The other members of the search party, however, were too much occupied with their own thoughts to ask for an explanation from the janitor-chauffeur. They rode along in silence for most of the way. The doctor had gained all the information that seemed obtainable. Mr. Porter, because of the criticism he had received, wished to draw as little attention to himself as possible, and Mr. Frankland appreciated the embarrassment of the situation.
There was a fairly good road from the school to the northern pass of the cañon, including a bridge over Lake River near its junction with Flathead River, which ran through the cañon, and along this they advanced close to the spot where the airship had struck. Here they stopped, and the search for Hal was started.
First they shouted his name again and again, permitting the echoes to die away after each shout; but no reply came. Then they lighted their lanterns, one for each, and started in pairs up and down the bank of the river.
Mr. Porter indicated the section of the stream along which Hal had conducted his hunt for Mr. Miles’ bag of souvenirs, and it was from a middle point in this section that search for the missing boy began. For a few hundred feet here the water was deep and comparatively quiet; but above this calmer stretch was a succession of falls so noisy as to make it necessary to shout in order to be heard.
The largest and noisiest of these falls was the lowest one. Dr. Byrd and Mr. Porter went upstream as far as this cataract, and stood a short time gazing into the water. There was little comfort in the feelings that possessed them as they gazed. The falling water glittered in the yellow moonlight, seeming to shine forth with a million ghost eyes, and in the noise of that tumbling flood every now and then they heard a strange sharp sound that seemed to pierce them through.