I went around and looked at the window and even then the cabin was
filled with smoke, but not so thick. Believe me, I wished that Tom Slade
was there then, because he’s great on deducing and finding clues and all
like that. That’s why we always called him Sherlock Nobody Holmes.
Anyway, I couldn’t make out what happened. Artie might have staggered up
against the window to get air, but I didn’t see how he could fall out,
and if he was able to climb out then why didn’t he come up where the
rest of us were?
I couldn’t make anything out of it; all I knew was he was gone. I knew
he must have been drowned and his body been carried up by the tide,
which was running up strong now.
Well, you can bet we didn’t have any fun drifting up. Nobody said
anything much; we just sat around the edge of the deck with our staffs
and pushed her off, whenever she ran against the shore.
Charlie Seabury sat next to me and after a while he said, “Who’s going
to tell his people?”
“I am,” I told him, “because I’m to blame for the whole business.”
“Nobody’s to blame,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” I said, “they just did it on account of me.”
“That’s because all the fellows like you,” he said, “and they like to do
anything for you.”
Anyway, it wasn’t so necessary, I see that now, and it’s just the same
as if I killed him. Gee, I wish it was I that got killed, I know that.
Cracky, I deserved to after being such a fool.
After that, nobody spoke for a long time, then Hunt Ward, who’s in the
Elk Patrol, said, “It’s the first fellow in our troop that died. I guess
we won’t go up to camp now.”
“Not in this boat, anyway,” I said.
Then after a while I said, “We’ll send his name in and they’ll print it
in _Boys Life_.”
“I know,” Hunt said, “with a black line around it.”
Yet we kind of kept hoping all the time, even though we knew there
wasn’t any sense in it.
“_You_ thought _you_ were a goner,” Hunt said, “and you came back all
right.”
Now I was a big fool that it didn’t put a certain idea in my head when
he said that, but I only said, “Yes, but that was different.”
Then Dorry Benton, who was two or three fellows away from me, said, “One
thing is sure, he went through the window and into the water. Maybe he
was half conscious and didn’t remember there was only a narrow strip of
deck there. And he must have tumbled right off it.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “only if he isn’t in the boat then he must be in
the water and if he fell in the water and couldn’t swim or shout either,
then he must be drowned.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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