Soon the widening distance and the falling darkness made it impossible for those upon the raft to see him at all. Thus he disappeared before the straining vision of those followers who saw him last, and the boy who had won the Mary Temple contest sat panting on the makeshift raft as the fleeting specter dissolved in the night and was seen no more.
And still the voice far out called, “Heeelp!” and the mountain across the lake mocked its beseeching summons in a gruesome undertone.
So, Wandering Willie, alone and unseen as usual, sped headlong in his triumphant race at last. No one “rooted” for him, no one cheered him.
But in the wet grass on shore far back where he had started, a sparkling gem, companion of his; loneliness and cheery reminder of his former exploit, blazed with fiery radiance in the black, tempestuous night.
CHAPTER XXX
JAWS UNSEEN
Darkness had fallen when Wilfred reached the submerged rock. There was no voice now, and only the sound of the beating water answered his own call. The launch was not to be seen but the end of its long flagpole projected a few inches out of the lake marking its watery grave.
Wilfred clutched the flagpole and tried to get a foothold on the sunken launch. One foot rested on a narrow ridge; he thought it was the coaming. Then the pole broke, his foot slipped, and he fell heavily into the cockpit of the launch.
If he had been as familiar with the launch as other boys at camp, he might have realized where he had fallen. But he gave no thought to that. His groping hand encountered something hard and he grasped it in an effort to extricate himself and get into unobstructed water. The thing he had grasped moved and instantly he felt a sensation of crushing in his arm, then a tearing of the flesh and excruciating pain. He had turned the fly-wheel of the engine and as his hand slipped around with it his forearm became wedged between the moving wheel and the engine bed. The rim of the heavy iron wheel was equipped with gear teeth to mesh with those of a magneto and these sawed into his arm like the teeth of a circular saw.
Screaming with the sudden pain, he pulled his arm loose, the wheel moving easily back again to the compression point. He thought some horrid, lurking creature of the depths had bitten him and he swam to the surface, in a panic of fear, and agonized with pain. He did not dare to use his one sound arm to feel of the other for fear of sinking again into that submerged jungle. The wounded arm was all but useless, the hand had no strength, and he was suffering torture. Besides, he felt giddy and kept himself from swooning by sheer will power, strengthened by the imminent peril of drowning.
Yet the few seconds that elapsed before he won the doubtful shelter of the rock were fraught with even greater danger than he knew, and it was in a half-conscious state that he wriggled onto the slippery, unseen mass and lay across it, swept by the dashing water, panting, suffering, and trying to keep his senses. It was only the same Wilfred Cowell who had made a simple promise to his mother—the same Wilfred Cowell cast in a new but not more tragic role....