“The motor has broken down, and we’re in a bad box!” declared Frank, seriously.
CHAPTER II
A WARM BEGINNING FOR CODDLING
A groan went up from full twenty throats, at this dismal announcement.
“What shall we do? We can’t just float down like this. It would look as if we were whipped before we began to play!” sang out Jack Comfort, almost in a whine.
“We’ve just got to swim for it, that’s all! Me for the cool drink!” said Lanky, pretending to poise on the bow of the boat as if for a plunge.
Frank looked serious indeed, but it was something more than the fact of the breakdown that worried him. He had reason for suspecting that Abner Gould must have done something to bring about this condition of affairs!
Still, he said nothing about it, not being sure. But he could not help remembering that this man had a brother who was known as something of a sport, and made himself conspicuous at many of the baseball games by his disposition to bet upon the result, something that the faculty of the several schools very much objected to, though unable to stop fully.
Dimly Frank could see how there might be some connection between this circumstance and their sudden delay. If Watkins Gould had been wagering heavily against the Columbia team winning, everything that helped disconcert them, and make them unduly anxious, was to his credit. And Abner did not have a face that Frank thought could be trusted.
“Don’t worry, boys,” he said, as the others crowded around, “there are more ways than one for getting to Bellport. If necessary we could go ashore and take the trolley.”
“You might if they let us climb on the roof, for every car is loaded down with people,” observed Paul Bird, Frank’s chum and catcher.