As he spoke a gigantic mountain of green water suddenly towered right above the helpless sloop. Its crest seemed to overtop the mast tip.

Automatically Tubby crouched low and reached out a hand for Hiram.

The next instant the wave swept down on them enveloping the lads in a turmoil of salt water. The two boys were swept away in the liquid avalanche like feathers before a gale.

When the wave had pa.s.sed, the wreck of the sloop could be seen staggering and wallowing like a stricken thing. But of her two recent occupants there was no trace upon the wilderness of heaving waters.

CHAPTER X.

A RESCUE AND A BIVOUAC.

From the bow of the _Algonquin_ Rob kept his eyes riveted on the spot at which he had seen the sloop vanish. But for some time he could see nothing but the billowing crests of the waves. Suddenly, to his astonishment, from the midst of the combing summits, there was revealed the swaying mast of the sloop, cutting great arcs dizzily across the lowering sky.

As the _Algonquin_ climbed to a wave top the entire length of the sloop was disclosed to the lad's gaze. On her deck he could now plainly see two figures.

"Got a gla.s.s?" he inquired of Ike.

"Sure," responded that individual, floundering forward with a pair of binoculars.

Rob clapped them to his eyes. The figures of Hiram and Tubby Hopkins swam into the field of vision. At the same instant, or so it seemed, Rob made out the wall of green water rushing downward upon the sloop.

While a cry of alarm still quivered upon his lips, the sloop rallied an instant, and then--was wiped out!

The others had pressed forward too, and the _Algonquin_ had, by that time, gotten close enough for them all to witness the marine tragedy.

"Steady, Rob," exclaimed the major, his hand on Rob's shoulder, "they may be all right yet."

Rob's face was white and set, but he nodded bravely. It seemed impossible that anything living could have escaped from the overwhelming avalanche of water.

Merritt seized the gla.s.ses as Rob set them down to take the wheel again.

He peered through them with straining eyes.

"Hullo, what's that off in the water there?" he shouted suddenly, pointing.

The next instant the object he had descried had vanished in the trough of a sea.

"Could you make out anybody?" asked the major anxiously.

"It looked like a spar with--Yes, there are two figures clinging to it."

"Here, let me look!" Rob s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.ses out of his comrade's hand.

"Hooray!" he cried the next instant, "it's Tubby and Hiram!"

"Are you sure?" asked the major, "perhaps it's some members of Hunt's crew."

"No, it's Tubby and Hiram. I can make out their uniforms," cried Rob. As he spoke he swung the wheel over, and the _Algonquin's_ head was turned in the direction of the spot where a spar with two objects clinging to it had last been seen.

"Wonder what can have become of Hunt and his crowd?" said Merritt presently.

"Maybe they've met with a watery grave," conjectured one of the detectives, "and from what you've told me it would be a good end for them."

"If they hain't taken that pocket-book with them," put in his companion, "the kidnapping of those boys was as desperate a bit of work as I've ever heard tell of."

In a brief time the two lads, none the worse apparently for their immersion, had been hauled on board the _Algonquin_, and were being plied with eager questions.

"I guess I caught on to that boom more by instinct than anything else,"

explained Tubby, "when I got the water out of my lungs I looked about me and saw that Hiram had grabbed it too."

"That's what I call luck," said one of the detectives in a wondering tone.

"It surely was," agreed Hiram, "but I guess there's a bigger bit coming."

"What do you mean?" asked the major, struck by something odd in the lad's tone.

For answer Tubby thrust a hand into an inside pocket of his coat and drew forth something that, dripping with water as it was, could be easily recognized as--the missing pocket-book!

"I guess they forgot to search me for it in the excitement following the collapse of the roof. I'm sorry it got wet, major," he added.

But the major and the others could only regard the fat boy with wondering eyes. Suddenly the major, the first to recover his senses, spoke:

"I don't know how I'm ever to thank you for this, Hopkins----," he began.

"Tell you how you can," spoke the irrepressible Tubby swiftly.

"How, my boy?"

"By taking us some place where we can get something to eat," quoth Tubby, "I'm so hungry I could demolish the left hind leg of a bra.s.s monkey without winking."

From the tumbling waves of an angry sea to the cool shadows of a magnificent forest of chestnut and oak may be a long distance to travel, but such is the jump over time and s.p.a.ce that we must make if we wish to accompany our Boy Scouts to their Mountain Camp. The evening sun, already almost touching the peaks of the nearest range, was striking level shafts of light through the forest as our party came to a halt, and Major Dangerfield ordered the canoes, by which they had traversed the smooth stretches of Echo Lake, hauled ash.o.r.e.

It was more than three days since the party had left the sh.o.r.es of Lake Champlain. The pa.s.sage of the lake from its lower end had been made by canoes. The same craft they were now using had transported them. There were three of the frail, delicate little vessels. One was blue, another a rich Indian red, and the third a dark green.

The canoes had been purchased by Major Dangerfield at Lakehead, a small town at which they left the railroad. They had been stocked with provisions and equipment for their long dash into the solitudes of the Adirondacks. Reaching Dangerfield, the canoes had been transported overland till the first of a chain of lakes, leading into the interior, had been reached. Here, to the boys' huge delight, they once more took to the water.

In the party were Rob, Merritt, young Hopkins, Hiram and little Andy Bowles, the bugler of the Eagles. Andy had been brought along because, as Rob had said, he was so little he would tuck in anywhere. Of course there had been keen regret on the part of the lads who were, of necessity, left behind. But they had borne it with true scout spirit and wished their lucky comrades all the good fortune in the world, when they embarked from Hampton.

Travel had bronzed the lads and stained and crumpled their smart uniforms. But they looked very fit and scout-like as they bustled about, making the various preparations for the evening's camp. Two members of the party have not yet been mentioned. One of these was a tall, lanky man with a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles set athwart his nose, and arrayed in a queer combination of woodsman's clothes and a pedant's immaculate dress. He had retained a white lawn tie and long black coat, but his nether limbs were encased in corduroys and gaiters, with a pair of big, square-toed shoes protruding beneath. On his head was an odd-looking round, black hat, which was always getting knocked into the water or caught on branches and swept off. This queer figure was Professor Jeremiah Jorum.

The second addition to the party was the major's factotum, Christopher Columbus Julius Pompey Snaggs. But for purposes of identification he answered to the name of Jumbo. Jumbo was a big-framed negro, intensely black and with a sunny, child-like disposition. He had a propensity for coining words to suit his convenience, deeming the King's English insufficient in scope to express his emotions.

Standing on the sandy strip of beach as he emerged from the red canoe, with a load of "duffle," Jumbo gazed about him in an interested way.

"Dis sutt'in'ly am a glumpferiferous spot to locate a camp," he remarked, letting his big eyes roll from the tranquil expanse of lake, fringed with feathery balsams and firs, to the slope above him clothed in its growth of fine timber, some of it hundreds of years old.