“How about that boat you said you could get for us, Tip?”
“Come right along, and I’ll try and make good. I had a ride on the same only last summer, and if only we c’n get the owner’s consent to loan her to us, we ought to be able to do a heap of rescue work. He’s some cranky, though, and mightn’t just like to let three boys handle the launch.”
“Hello! that sounds cheery to me!” exclaimed Billy, who had not known anything about this before. “A motorboat would be able to get around in this flood all right, I should think, provided it kept away from that nasty current of the river. Lead us to the man who owns such a craft. That’s kind of you, Tip.”
The Lawrence boy hurried away, with his two new friends tagging at his heels. Dodging in and out of the crowds that were hastening this way and that, all terribly excited and wrought up by the prospects of the flood taking a fearful toll of property if not human lives, they came after a while to where a cottage stood, with its grounds running down toward the river.
“There’s the boathouse, yonder,” called Tip over his shoulder. “Mr. Sperry was smart enough to have it a floating one, so all he has to do now is to keep changing the ropes that hold it.”
“I hear some one working with the engine of the launch, seems to me,” remarked Billy, whose hearing was very acute when he was excited and anxious.
“Yes, but I just glimpsed Mr. Sperry himself looking out of the window,” said Tip Lange, as if to explain why he did not intend to alter their course and head toward the floating boathouse. “He’s a lame man, and can’t get around much afoot, so he has an automobile and a launch to take him. Come along in with me, fellows.”
There was indeed a mud-splashed motorcar at the gate as the three lads passed through.
“That’s his runabout,” commented Tip. “Like’s not he’s been down where the crowd gathered to hear the latest news. I wonder, now, if he saw the bridge go out, and how you got Tug Wilson safe ashore, Hugh.”
He had hardly knocked on the door when it was opened. Mr. Sperry was a man with a red beard, and walked with a crutch and a cane. Hugh remembered having seen him in the crowd; for that useful training as a scout to notice things and impress them on his memory, whether they seemed worth while or not at the time, was serving the boy another good turn.