_ CHAPTER II. A HOPELESS SEARCH
In the brief instant that Jerry stood on the slippery point of rock he had the queer feeling that it was all a horrible dream, or at least only an impossible scene from a motion picture. Where a boat had been a second before was now only a seething, tossing down- tumbling wall of brownish foam.
But his stunned inaction was quickly gone. Down to the very edge of the flood he raced, almost losing his balance and toppling in. At a dangerous angle he leaned over and peered into the churning water- pit below.
Dave had come hurrying to his side, to miss his footing at the last and plunge waist-deep into the current. A precious moment was lost in rescuing him. When, both safe on the rocky ledge, they turned to scan the depths of the fall, it was to see a dark object suddenly pop up full fifty feet downstream. It was the boat--but no Tod.
"Did you see it!" cried Jerry excitedly. "Didn't it look like something blackish in the bottom of the boat?"
"She's full of water, that's all. Tod's down there under the fall. He's drowned, I tell you! What shall we do? What shall we do!" Excitable Dave was fast losing his head.
"Come on!" shouted Jerry, aroused by the helplessness of his companion. "We've got to get to the mill and have them turn the water through the race. Then we've got to get a boat out there-- quick!"
But he had not waited for Dave. Across the river just below the dam was a house. If there was a telephone there--Jerry knew there was one at the mill--something might yet be done in time. There was of course no way of reaching the mill itself across that raging torrent. There
was a telephone at the house, but it seemed hours after Jerry reached it before he finally got a gruff "Hello" from the mill manager, Mr. Aikens. But, fortunately, Aikens was not slow to grasp the situation. In the midst of his explanations Jerry realized that there was no one at the other end of the wire.
Out of the house he dashed and down to where in his wild race he had seen a boat moored below the dam. The oars were still in place. Barely waiting for the panting Dave to tumble in, he pushed off, exultingly noting as he strained at the oars that already the volume of water pouring over the falls had lessened. Before he reached the main channel it had dwindled to a bare trickle.
"Take the oars!" he directed the helpless Dave, at the same time stumbling to the bow of the boat and jerking off shoes, shirt and trousers. Diving seemed a hopeless undertaking, but there was little else to do. Again and again he plunged under, coming up each time nearly spent but desperately determined to try again. Two boats put out from the mill side of the river, capable Mr. Aikens in one of them. A grappling hook trailing from the stern of the boat told that such accidents as this were not unusual in treacherous Plum Run.
Then began a search that exhausted their every resource. The ill word had speedily gone around among the nearer houses, and in the course of an hour a great crowd of men appeared from Watertown itself. The water was black with boats and alive with diving bodies. Hastily constructed grappling hooks raked the narrow stream from side to side. A big seine was even commandeered from a houseboat up the river and dragged back and forth across the rough river bed till the men were worn out.
But all to no avail. Every now and then a shout of discovery went up, but the booty of the grappling hooks invariably proved to be only watersoaked logs or mud-filled wreckage. Once they were all electrified at a black-haired body dislodged by a clam-rake, that came heavily to the surface and then sank, to be the subject of ten minutes frantic dragging, only to be finally revealed as the body of an unfortunate dog.
It was heart-breaking work, and the tension was not lessened with the appearance on the scene of Mr. Fulton, Tod's father. He said nothing, but his hopeless silence was more depressing than any words of grief could have been. Jerry and Dave and Frank, feeling in some queer way guilty of their friend's death, could not meet his eyes as he asked dully how it had happened.
The dreary day dragged to a weary close, and the sun sank behind heavy clouds black with more than one rumbling promise of storm. The boys toiled doggedly on, weak from hunger, for their lunches had gone over with the boat, and, anyway, they would not have had the heart to swallow a bite. Lanky, good-natured Tod Fulton--drowned! It simply couldn't be. But the fast darkening water, looking cruel now, and menacing, where it had laughed and rippled only that morning, gave the lie to their hopes. Hopes? The last one had gone when Mr. Aikens had said:
"Never heard of anybody's being brought to after more than two hours under water. Only thing we can hope for is to find the body. I'm going to telephone to town and tell 'em to send out some dynamite."
It was already dusk when this decision was made, and it was after nine o'clock before an automobile brought a supply of dynamite sticks and detonating caps. In the meanwhile a powerful electric searchlight had been brought over from the interurban tracks a scant mile west of the river line, and the millwheel had been shafted to the big dynamo and was generating current to flash dazzling rays of light across the water.
Mayor Humphreys, from Watertown, and Mr. Aikens were chosen to set off the dynamite, while watchers lined the shores, sharp-eyed in the hope of catching sight of the body when it should come to the muddied surface of Plum Run after the dynamite had done its work.
Charge after charge was set off, and countless hundreds of fish were stunned or killed by the terrific force of the explosive, but no body of a hapless sixteen-year-old boy rewarded the anxious searchers. Up and down the river combed the dynamiters, and glare and crash rent the night for a mile down the stream. It began to look as if other means would have to be resorted to--the saddest of all, perhaps--time. Sometime, somewhere, after days or even weeks, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred miles down the river, a sodden, unrecognizable body would be washed up on sand-bar or mud-bank. It was a sickening thought.
"Have all the river towns been telegraphed?" asked a bystander, of the mayor. A nod of the head was his only answer.
"We may as well go home," was the final reluctant verdict. "We can come back in the morning." Mr. Fulton alone refused to abandon the search, and Mr. Aikens kindly offered to bear him company till daybreak brought others to take his place. When all had gone save these two and the three boys, Jerry approached and tried to draw Mr. Aikens aside.
"Do you suppose," he began with a kind of despairing eagerness, "that he could have stayed in the boat?"
Aikens shook his head. "Not a chance in the world," he declared.
"But I thought----" began Jerry, to be interrupted by Mr. Aikens, who finally contented himself with merely repeating:
"Not a chance in the world." They were silent until at last Mr. Aikens, moved by some impulse of kindliness, for he could hardly help guessing how miserable the boy's thoughts must be, added:
"You thought what, lad?"
"The boat was full of water, of course, but when she popped up, it looked like there was something black in the bottom----"
"You saw the boat go over, didn't you! It must have turned over and over a dozen times down there in that whirlpool, even if he had stayed in till she lit. But he couldn't have. And even if----"
"Yes" urged Jerry, but without enthusiasm.
"If he
was in the bottom of the boat he would have been drowned just the same, knocked senseless as he probably was by the terrific force of the fall and the tons of water plunging on top of him. Mind you, I don't think there was one chance in a million but that he was dashed out long before the boat hit bottom."
"But where's the--the body, then?" objected Jerry miserably.
"If grappling hooks and seines and dynamite couldn't answer that question, don't expect me to. Look here, lad, I know you feel all cut up over it, but think of how his poor father feels----"
"I am--that's what makes me feel as if it was partly my fault."
"Now--now--don't take it like that. Man and boy I've lived on this and other rivers a good many years over forty, and a drowning I've known for every one of those years. The water's a treacherous dame-- she smiles at you in the sunshine, and the little waves kiss each other and play around your boat, but the shadows lurk deep and they're waiting, waiting, I tell you. The old river takes her toll. It happened to be
your friend, that's all. But it wasn't anybody's fault. Mr. Fulton would be the last one in the world to think so."
Jerry looked over at Mr. Fulton, who had finally ended his mute pacing up and down, and now sat, chin in hand, staring out across the water. A sudden impulse made the boy go over and stand for awhile, silent, beside the grief-stricken man. He wanted to say something, but the words would not come. So, after a little, he walked upstream to where Dave and Frank huddled against an overturned boat; the night was growing a bit chill.
"Moon's coming up," remarked Frank as Jerry settled down beside them. No one answered.
"It's awful to sit around and not move a finger to find him," shivered Dave at last. "Seems as if there ought to be something we could do."
"Do you know what I think?" replied Jerry, almost eagerly. "I think I was right about that boat. I've been trying to remember what we left in the boat that could have looked like--like what I saw when she came up. There wasn't a thing in the boat--not a thing. It was Tod I saw--I know it was!"
"But he never could have stayed in," objected Frank.
"That's what Mr. Aikens said--and everybody else. But tell me what else it could have been I saw. I saw
something,
that I know."
"We ought to have gone after the boat," admitted Dave, slowly. "We didn't do a bit of good here, that's sure."
"But we didn't know that at the time," Frank argued. "Everybody'd have blamed us if we'd gone on a wild goose chase down the river after an empty boat----"
"But nobody would have said a word if we'd found him in the bottom of a boat everybody else thought was empty. If the moon was only higher----"
"You don't catch me drilling off down Plum Bun at night, moon or no moon. There's a rattlesnake or copperhead for every hundred yards!" It was Frank who took up Jerry's thought. "Besides, it would be different if we hadn't waited so long. Tod--Tod's--he's dead now," voicing at last the feeling they had never before put into words.
There was a gruffness in Jerry's voice as he answered, a gruffness that tried hard to mask the trembling of his tones. "I know it, but-- but--I want to do something for Mr. Fulton. Won't you fellows go along with me? I guess I--I'll go."
"Down river?" asked both boys, but without eagerness.
"Till we find the boat."
"It's no use," said Frank. "Our folks'll cane us now when we get home. Going along, Dave--with me?"
"How far do you s'pose the boat's drifted by now, Jerry?" asked Dave instead of answering Frank.
"Can't tell. She's probably stuck on a sandbar or a snag, anywhere from five to twenty-five miles down. Don't go along, Dave, unless you want to."
"Better come home with me," urged Frank.
"Do you
need me along, Jerry?" queried Dave uncertainly.
"No--" shortly--"no
I don't. Mr. Fulton does--Tod does."
Jerry rose stiffly to his feet and started slowly off in the faint moonlight, without so much as a look behind.
"So long, Jerry," called Frank. "Come on, Dave."
But Dave slowly shook his head and reluctantly followed the footsteps of his chum.
"Hold on a minute, old man; I'll stick with you." _