The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island | Page 6

of smoke, and raise a panic in a crowded hall. They should be suppressed."
"Very true, J.W., you have the right of it," said Billy, smiling. "You get the right idea under your bonnet now and then."
Young Smith had always been fond of Jack, but he was more so now and stuck close to the older boy on all occasions, saying the next day to Jack as they were walking on deck:
"Do you know, Jack, you have done a lot for me, and it is time I did something for you. I am going to speak to my father about you. It is a bit of a job for you to get your schooling and your living and everything, isn't it?"
"Well, it is not so easy, Jesse W., and I do have a tussle now and then," returned Jack, smiling at the other boy's earnestness. "Still, one has to work for what he gets in this world."
"Unless he steals it, and there is no satisfaction in that," said the smaller boy wisely. "And later he has to work--in jail. What I wanted to say was that now you have done this last thing for me, saving my life, that's what it was, I think my father would like to do something for you, help you through your schooling or something like that. Of course you would not want him to give you money, for he does not put a commercial value on my life, but he could help you to get ahead and so help yourself, couldn't he now, Jack?"
"I suppose he could," Jack laughed, "and you are a thoughtful young fellow, J.W., but never mind about that. One of the sailors, Bucephalus, any one, in fact, could have done what I did. In fact, it is all in the day's work at sea, and nothing is thought of it."
"No, but no one else did it, Jack. Any one might, but no one did. Only you. Any one else could have done it, but they did not all the same. That's nonsense about your pitching me overboard. I heard some of them talking of it. Why, you were not there. I was on the quarter deck, where I had no business to be, I suppose, with just a little bit of a low rail, and when the vessel took a sudden roll I went overboard."
"Jack saw you up there," said Percival, who was walking with the others, "and spoke about warning you that it was dangerous. In fact, he was on the way to tell you when you got ahead of him and rolled overboard."
"Jack is all the time thinking of some one," said young Smith. "That's what makes him different from the other Hilltop boys."
"Oh, then you don't think I think of others, eh? That's one on me."
"Oh, you haven't had to, Dick, you have always had some one to think for you," said Jesse W. wisely, and both Dick and Jack laughed.
"That young fellow will be doing something for you, Jack," said Percival a few minutes later when the two happened to be alone. "He is thinking of it now, and later you will hear from it."
"I suppose he will," said Jack thoughtfully, "and I don't know how I can stop him. I could not help doing what I did, but you would have done the same if you had seen the danger before I did."
"But I did not," returned Dick, "and that is just young Smith's line of argument. It is nothing that you could have done something if you don't do it. Well, you deserve all that can be done for you, and that is all there is about it, old chap."
Two days later in the middle of the afternoon, the day having been warm with very little air stirring so that the boys were glad to seek the shelter of the awnings spread across the decks, the breeze suddenly fell away and the air became fairly stifling.
The captain looked anxious, and ordered the awnings taken down, and told the boys that they had better go below.
Dr. Wise and the professors got the boys below, and none too soon, for all of a sudden a funnel-shaped cloud appeared on the horizon, spread with startling rapidity until it covered the entire heavens, and then from it shot out a fierce flash of lightning, while the wind which had died out now blew from an unexpected quarter with the greatest fury.
Being under their own steam they, of course, had no use for sails, which would have been blown away.
For all that the waves dashed them ahead with great rapidity and the propellers were now high out of water and now buried deep in the sea, the yacht being almost unmanageable.
The wind was behind them, and there was no chance