Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island | Page 5

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,