"No, thanks! We're all right now. Go on out and help Tom and the two he's got, Pete. You two can get them ashore all right, I guess."
Only the woman that Jack had saved was in need of attention when they were all finally ashore. She was half drowned, thanks to the struggle she had put up after she had jumped into the water, but it was not much of a task to revive her, and when she had regained her senses she, like the others, was grateful. Jack himself was tired and pretty well exhausted by his exertions, but he cared little for that, since he had been successful. A few minutes' rest, and he was all right.
"Our launch—it's burned up, I guess!" cried the girl who had been so sensible and plucky, the one who had let Pete Stubbs tow her ashore without making a single movement to hamper him in any way. "Look, the fire seems to be out, but I don't believe there's much left of the poor little boat."
The driving rain and the lake water had, indeed, put the fire out, and the blackened hull of the launch, which had drifted slightly toward the shore, was floating quietly now.
"I'll swim out and see what sort of shape she's in," said Jack. "Perhaps she's worth saving yet. The engine may be all right, with a little repair work, and I think I can tow her in without much trouble. She's drifted pretty close in already."
He plunged in at once, without heeding the protests from the rescued ones, who said he had already done more than enough for them. A minute of fast swimming took him out to the launch, and he climbed aboard, cautiously, to see what damage had been done. The boat smelled most unpleasantly of the fire, and he found that the engine would need a good deal of attention before it would be of service again. But the forward part of the boat had suffered comparatively slight damage, as Jack saw with pleasure. Then, suddenly, as he looked around him, he saw something that made him jump.
"It can't be!" he exclaimed to himself.
But a few moments of examination convinced him that he had made no mistake. He searched the boat then from stem to stern, and, when he had satisfied himself, he dropped overboard again, after making a rope he had carried with him from the shore fast to the launch, and towed her leisurely in, until her keel grated on the beach, and the men who had been on board pulled her up beyond high water mark.
As soon as he could then Jack drew Pete Stubbs aside.
"Say, Pete," he said, in a low tone, and tremendously excited, "here's a queer business! That launch is the one that was used to carry me off last night. I'm absolutely certain! I stayed on board long enough to make sure. Do you suppose these people can be mixed up with that scoundrel? It's the same boat—and if you'll notice, when you get a chance, she's been patched up in front, right where she must have been smashed up in going through that lock. What do you make of that?"