It was not a very sociable company of boys who turned about at this command and paddled slowly back to the starting point, and neither were Noble and Tom Bigden the only ones among them who were mad enough to fight. Two of their number were so jealous of each other and so anxious to win prizes, that they had deliberately disgraced the club in the presence of hundreds of strangers; and it is hard to see how any lover of fair play could help being annoyed over it. Joe Wayring felt it very keenly; and consequently when Tom Bigden paddled up alongside and told him that he intended to get even with him some way for the stand he had taken, Joe was in just the right humor to give him as good as he sent.
“Joe Wayring, you have made an enemy of me by this day’s work,” said Tom, in a threatening tone.
“By telling the truth in regard to your fouling of Frank Noble?” exclaimed Joe. “I don’t care if I have. I saw the whole proceeding, and I know that you meant to do it. I warned you that any boy who could so far forget himself as to deliberately interfere with another, would be forever ruled out of the club’s races, and you will find that I knew what I was talking about.”
“You might as well expel me and be done with it?” exclaimed Tom, angrily. “What’s the use of my belonging to the club if I am not allowed to take part in its contests? Joe Wayring, there’s no honor about you. You have led me to believe that you were my friend, and then you went back on me the very first chance you got.”
“Do you mean that I have been sailing under false colors?” cried Joe, indignantly. “If you throw out any more insinuations of that sort before we reach the boat-house I’ll dump you in the lake. When the judge questioned me I told him the truth; and I wouldn’t have done otherwise to please any body.”
Something must have warned Tom that Joe would be as good as his word, for he had nothing more to say to him. He gradually fell behind and allowed him to paddle down to the boat-house in peace.
CHAPTER XII.
OFF FOR INDIAN LAKE.
WHEN Joe Wayring beached his canoe below the boat-house, he was immediately surrounded by his friends who were impatient to hear all about it. They knew there had been a foul, for some of the laggards in the race had seen it; but they could not tell how it had been brought about, or who was to blame for it.
“It was Noble’s fault in the first place, and Tom Bigden’s in the second,” said Joe, in response to their hurried inquiries. “It seems that there are three ‘cliques’ in the club, one of which believes in doing things fairly, while the other two do not. Loren Farnsworth was ‘booked’ by one of the cliques to win the paddle race, while Frank Noble was the choice of the other. Each was determined that his opponent should not win, and the result was most disgraceful—a deliberate collision at the stake-boat in the presence of all these strangers. What sort of a story will they carry back to the city about the Mount Airy canoe club? Noble began the row by putting himself in Loren’s way and Tom retaliated by capsizing Frank’s canoe and throwing him out into the water.”
“Do you think he meant to do it?” inquired Hastings, who was far in the lead at the time, and could not of course see what was going on behind him.