“He isn’t here,” he heard Sam say.
“No. I guess he got away after all. Say, let’s stay here and have some fun. Did you ever make the mill wheel go around?”
“No; how do you do it?” asked Sam.
“Why, you just raise the wooden gate over by the mill race. That lets the water from the pond come down the channel, and the wheel turns over. It’s sport. I did it one day, and the wheel went around in great shape. Let’s do it.”
“All right,” agreed Sam. “What are you going to do with your fish?”
“I’ll lay ’em down. It’s kind of hard to raise the gate, and let the water in. It’ll take two of us, I guess, for it’s rusty. But it’s fun.”
Tommy, lying there on the big water wheel, heard, and, for the moment, a cold chill went over him. They were going to set in motion the very wheel on which he was hiding! He would be carried over with it—down into the whirling, green water, and he might be drowned, or crushed. He wanted to cry out, to tell them he was there—to ask them not to turn on the water—but he could not seem to speak.
He could hear them go laughing from the main room of the mill, laughing between themselves at the fun they were going to have. They had forgotten about Tommy now.
“I must get down! I must get away!” thought the young baseball captain.
For a moment it seemed as if he could not move, and then, as he thought of what might happen, he gave a spring, and tried to slide down over the outer edge of the wheel to the mill floor.