Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Mark Overton (best color ereader .txt) 📗

begrudge your crowd for taking it, because we know it will have been fairly won.”

It was in this friendly spirit that the rival captains shook hands and parted. Each leader would fight tooth and nail to capture the impending game, using all legitimate means to further his ends; but there would be no hard feelings between the opposing players. Harmony’s fine act had rendered this a certainty.

Jack had said nothing about the narrow escape Chester had from a real catastrophe in the loss of their wonderful young pitcher. He thought it best not to mention matters that concerned only Chester folks; although feeling positive that Martin would congratulate him on his success in keeping Alec; for the game would lose much of its interest if only a second-string pitcher officiated in the box for either side when they anticipated showing their best goods.

“He’s all wool, and a yard wide, that Martin,” asserted Toby, after they had turned their faces toward home again, and were booming along the road that presently would take them close to the shore of Lake Constance.

“There’s no doubt about his being a good fellow,” agreed Jack; “and it’s certainly a real pleasure to go up against such a crowd. For one, I’ve underestimated the Harmony boys. We’ve heard a lot about their noisy ways and hustle, but, after all, I think most of it’s on the surface, and deeper down they’re just as much gentlemen as you’d find anywhere. Most games of rivalry are won through aggressiveness, and plenty of fellows cultivate that mode of playing. It doesn’t follow that such chaps are boors, or clowns, or brawlers off the field. We could stand a little more of that sort of thing ourselves, to tell you the truth, Toby–standing on our toes, and keeping wide awake every second of the time play is on.”

“Right you are, Jack, and after this I’m going to whoop it up a lot more’n I’ve ever done before. You’ll see some hopping to beat the band, too. I’ve managed to cover a good deal of territory up to now but, say, I aspire to do still better. I’m rubbing snake oil on my joints right along so as to make ’em more supple. Why, I’d bathe in it if I thought that would make me better able to do my part toward corraling that great game for Chester.”

“There, I had a first glimpse of Lake Constance,” remarked Jack. “The trees have closed the vista again, so you can’t catch it; but I suppose we’ll soon come to a place where we’ll have the water on our left, and the road even runs along close to the edge. I remember skating up about this far last February, soon after I arrived in Chester; and the lake was then a solid sheet of smooth ice.”

“Queer how cold the water stays all summer,” mused Toby. “There are times when I’ve seen boys shivering in July and August while bathing. It’s fed by springs, they say, though Paradise River also empties into the lake. There, now you can see away across to the other shore, Jack. Isn’t it a bully sheet of water, though?”

“What dandy times we can have next winter iceboating, skating, playing hockey, and everything like that,” suggested Jack, delightedly, as his eyes feasted on the immense body of fresh water, with its surface just rippled in the soft summer breeze.

“We’ll soon come to where the boys said they meant to go in swimming this morning,” added Toby. “It’s a perfect day, too, even if the sun does feel hot. Just such a day as this when I got that nasty little cramp in the cold water of the lake, and might have had a serious time only for Big Bob Jeffries taking me on his back and carrying me like a baby to the shore.”

“Listen!” exclaimed Jack just then, “what’s all that yell going on ahead of us? The boys must be cutting up capers; and yet it strikes me there’s a note of fear in their shouts. Turn on the juice, Toby, and eat up the road! Something terrible may be happening, you know. Things keep following each other these days like sheep going over a fence after their leader!”

Toby made the flivver fairly bound along, such was his eagerness to arrive at the scene of all the excitement. Twenty seconds later he gave a loud cry.

“Look, Jack, there’s some one floundering out there, and throwing up his arms. It’s our Joel Jackman, I do believe! and great Cæsar! he’s got a cramp and is drowning!”

CHAPTER XIII
WHEN THE CRAMP SEIZED JOEL

What the excited Toby had just said in thrilling tones was undoubtedly the truth. There was no “fooling” about the frantic actions of the boy who was struggling so desperately out in the lake. He was threshing the water furiously, now vanishing partly underneath, only to come up again in a whirl of bubbles.

When a cramp seizes any one, no matter if he should happen to be a champion in the art of swimming, he is always in mortal peril of his life, especially should he be at some distance from the shore, and in deep water. It almost paralyzes every muscle, and the strongest becomes like a very babe in its spasmodic clutch.

Joel Jackman was long-legged and thin, but had always been reckoned one of those wiry sort of chaps, built on the order of a greyhound. He could run like the wind, and jump higher than any fellow in all Chester, barring none. But when that awful cramp seized him in the cold water of Lake Constance, lie found himself unable to make any progress toward shore, distant at least fifty feet.

It was all he could do to keep his head above water, struggling as he was with the fear of a terrible death before his eyes. His two comrades were running up and down on the shore; not that they were such arrant cowards but what they would have been willing to do almost anything to help Joel; but unfortunately they had lost their heads in the sudden shock; and as Toby afterwards contemptuously said, “acted like so many chickens after the ax had done its foul work.”

Jack sized up the situation like a flash.

“Toby, you get one of those boards over yonder, and come out to help me if I’m in trouble, understand?” he jerked out, even as the flivver came to a sudden stop, and he was bounding over the side regardless of any exit.

“All right, Jack; you bet I will!” Toby shouted, following suit.

Jack began to shed his outer clothes as he ran swiftly forward. First his cap went, and then his coat. He had low shoes on so that he was able to detach them with a couple of quick jerks, and at the loss of the laces.

Two seconds, when at the verge of the water, sufficed for him to get rid of his trousers, and then, he went in with a rush.

Toby meanwhile had tried to follow suit even as he made for the boards in question. It had been just like Jack to glimpse these in the beginning, while those other fellows apparently did not know a board was within half a mile.

Seeing what Toby meant to do, the two swimmers followed suit, so that presently the whole three of them had each picked up a plank, and were pushing out with it.

Jack had plunged ahead, swimming in any old way, since his one object just then was speed, and not style. He could not have done better had he been up against a swarm of rivals working for a prize. Well, there was a prize dangling there in plain sight. A precious human life was at stake, and unless he could arrive in time poor Joel might go down, never to come up again in his senses.

He had already been under once, and through his desperate efforts succeeded in reaching the surface of the agitated water again. Even as Jack started swimming, after getting in up to his neck, the drowning boy vanished again.

Jack swam on, trying to increase his pace, if such a thing were possible. He must get on the spot without the waste of a second. Joel would likely come to the surface again, but battling more feebly against the threatening fate. If he went down a third time it would be all over but the funeral, Jack knew.

He was more than two-thirds of the way there when to his ecstatic joy he once more discovered the head of Joel. The boy was still making a gallant fight, but under a fearful handicap.

Jack shouted hoarsely as he swam onward:

“Keep fighting, Joel! We’ll get you, old chap! Strike out as hard as you can! You’re all right, I tell you, only don’t stop working!”

Perhaps these cheering words did help Joel to continue his weakening efforts to keep himself afloat. Possibly had it not been for his hearing Jack’s voice raised in encouragement, he might have given up the ghost before then.

Nearer Jack surged, his heart seeming to be in his throat with dread lest Joel go down again a few seconds before he could get within touch. The three boys with the boards were also coming along in a solid bunch, although of course with less speed than Jack showed, owing partly to the fact that they had to shove the planks before them.

Now, Joel, with a last despairing gurgle was sinking again, and for the very last time, being utterly exhausted by his frantic struggles, and the terrible pain occasioned by the cramp.

But Jack knew he had arrived close enough to dart forward and clutch his comrade before the other could quite vanish from view. Joel was so far gone that he did not try to grip his rescuer, as most drowning persons will do in their frantic desire to save themselves at any cost.

Jack tried to keep the boy’s head above water as best he could. He made no effort to swim towards the shore. What was the use when the other fellows were coming along with their boards. The one thing necessary just then was to prevent Joel from swallowing any more water; he had already no doubt gulped in huge quantities, and lost the ability to breathe properly.

So Toby and the other two found them when they finally arrived. The planks were arranged so that Joel could be raised and sustained by their means; after which the little procession of swimmers headed for the bank.

When they arrived, Joel was lifted out of the water and carried tenderly up to a patch of green sward lying in the shade of a wide-branching oak. Here they laid him down on his chest, while Jack proceeded to work over him, instructing the other fellows just what they were to do to assist.

He knelt astride with one knee on either side of Joel’s body, and commenced pressing down regularly on the small of his back, so as to induce an artificial respiration. At the same time, Toby and one of the other fellows worked the unconscious boy’s arms back and forth like a pair of pistons; while the third fellow started to rub his cold lower extremities.

At first Joel seemed pretty far gone, and his appearance sent a chill through the sympathetic heart of Toby Hopkins. But after they had kept up this vigorous treatment for a little while, there were signs of returning animation. Joel belched out a gallon of water, Toby always insisted, and inside of ten minutes was able to talk, though Jack insisted on keeping up the rubbing until the boy’s body was a rosy hue from the irritation.

“Now get some clothes on, Joel, and you’ll soon be feeling prime,”