“Bar,” exclaimed Val, “try and get over the stern without upsetting her.”
“You try it,” said Bar; “you’re lighter than I am.”
It was a perilous experiment, for it endangered all they had thus far gained, but in a minute or so more Val Manning was in the boat and bailing for dear life.
Bar turned, every now and then, for a look at his other friends.
Sibyl’s face was pale, but she was steadily obeying his injunction “not to try to keep too much of her above water.”
George Brayton was doing all a man could do, but it was evident that he was fast becoming fatigued, while Effie Dryer seemed almost afraid to look at him.
“If I can only get in and help Val,” groaned Bar.
But just then, sweeter than the sweetest music Bar had ever heard in his life, a chorus of wild yells from boyish throats came to his ears across the water, and around the nearest point of land he saw the great, clumsy, scow-built punt which Zeb Fuller and his friends had borrowed for their day’s fishing coming on at as great a resemblance to speed as her crew of excited boys could give her.
“Overboard, all of them!” had been Zeb’s exclamation, as the scene of the disaster opened upon him. “Pull, boys, pull! No time now for remarks.”
Pull they did like good fellows, only it seemed to them very much as if the heavy old scow were anchored.