The Hilltop Boys on the River | Page 7

boy in a motor-boat. "Young
J.W. is full of pluck."
The smaller boy was taking Jack's advice by this time, and there was
need of it, for there was a squall coming and all the boys were making
for the shore.
"Huh! you fellows are all afraid!" shouted Herring. "What's a little
blow to fellows like us? Go on shore, you weaklings."
"There is danger, isn't there, Jack?" asked Percival, as Jack was running
for shore, having seen that young Smith was safe.
"Yes, there is," shortly, "and those fellows will find it out before long.
They should be told of it."
"Yes, and get abuse for our trouble," snapped Dick. "I won't do it for
one."
"Better come in!" shouted Jack, all except the two bullies being now
close to shore, and getting ready to make a landing.

"Mind your business!" shouted Herring. "We know how to look out for
ourselves if you don't!"
"I don't like to say 'I told you so,' Jack, but I did," said Percival. "If
anything happens, the fault will be all theirs."
At that moment Colonel Bull, on the bank, blew a tremendous blast on
a bugle to call the boats in, and Herring obeyed, knowing that he would
be cut short of many of his privileges if he did not.
As it was the two boys narrowly escaped an upset, and Merritt was
deathly pale and shaking like a man with the ague when at last they got
ashore, none too soon.
The river was white with foam, and it was no place for a small boat
with the wind blowing sharply down from the mountains.
"You should have come in with the others," said the colonel sharply
when the two bullies landed. "If you take another such risk you will be
prohibited from going on the river at all. As it is, you will not go out
again to-day."
Herring knew that there was no appeal from this decision, as the
colonel was the physical instructor as well as drillmaster, and the
doctor never disputed his word in cases which were so palpably just as
in this instance.
"Pete wanted to show off," chuckled Billy Manners, "and got come up
with. He can't bully the colonel if he can bully the small boys."
"He can't bully all of them either," said Harry, "for some of them won't
take it from him even if they can't fight him."
As it happened to be pleasant in the afternoon, and many of the boys
were out on the river in boats, Herring felt the effect of his foolish
boasting, and was greatly chagrined that he was cut off from a very
enjoyable sport.

Jack took Percival's boat out and made very good speed with it so that
Dick said with a grin:
"Well, the boat is all right, I see, and I am the fellow that needs to take
a lesson, not the boat. As I said before I believe you could get speed out
of a canal-boat."
"You can get speed out of this one if you will study it a bit, and not
think only of using up gasolene. Besides, there is fun to be had out of
the boat, even if you do not go like the wind all the time."
"Yes, I suppose there is, but I like to go fast, and I guess every boy
does. If one does not there is generally something the matter with him."
Herring was not only smarting under not being allowed to go out with
the rest, but also from the knowledge that Jack was a better boatman
than he was, and that the boat which he had made himself, for this was
known to all the boys now, could make better time than the expensive
one his father had bought him and he said to Merritt, who had no one to
go out with him, and was not allowed to run Herring's boat:
"I'd like to fix that boat of Sheldon's so that he couldn't run it. He'll be
crowing over me all the time, and that is something I won't stand. It'll
be an easy thing to get at it at night."
"Of course," agreed Merritt. "Make a hole in his tank, do something to
the engine or cut a hole in the bottom. Anything will do. Then we can
say that the boat was no good in the first place, and every one will
believe you. That's easy."
"I won't say anything about it. Wouldn't he suspect something if I was
to speak about it? You don't show any sense!"
"I show as much as you do, staying out there on the river when there
was a squall coming down from the mountain," sulked Merritt. "Don't
you talk. That was the biggest