Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Camps -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction
One day—it was on a Saturday—Mr. Carson (he’s a trustee) and another man
who was a scoutmaster, went to Catskill to get the money out of the bank
to pay the workmen. They always brought it in a tin box. So now you
better look at the map.
Instead of coming around to camp by the trail they rowed across the
lake. They started from a willow tree up near the outlet. That was where
they had left the boat on the way down to Catskill. You’ll see that
tree. The reason why they didn’t go around by the trail was because on
account of the mud. It had been raining all the time for about a week
and the trail was bad, especially in the woods. There were great big
puddles in the woods like young lakes.
That afternoon when they came back it was very dark and while they were
coming across the lake toward camp all of a sudden a thunder-storm
started. Gee whiz, I can remember it because we were helping to pile up
lumber at the new landing, and the wind blew over a pile of boards. We
were just scooting for the pavilion when all of a sudden Worry Aiken (he
was in a troop from Vermont), he shouted, “_Look at the boat! Look at
the boat! Look at the boat!_”
Oh, boy, I’ll never forget what we saw. The boat was about maybe two or
three hundred feet from the shore where the willow tree is. It was so
dark and the water was so all churned up like that we couldn’t see very
plain. But anyway it seemed to me the boat was upside down.
I know one thing, I had a funny kind of a feeling, gee, I can’t tell you
about it, but I felt as if maybe I would see something later that I
didn’t want to see. It felt all kind of, you know, sort of like when
you’re in an elevator and it stops suddenly.
The next thing I saw, a figure crawled up on the shore away over on the
other side. A scout said, “_Look!_” That was when I first saw it. It
looked black and low down like an animal. Then it seemed to stay still.
I said, kind of whispered, I was so scared, “I don’t see the boat any
more.”
Garry Everson (he comes from down the Hudson), he said, “It’s there,
look where the light is—just this side of the light.”
Then I could see it. It was upside down. You could hardly tell it from
the water. There wasn’t anybody near it that I could see. Besides, I
couldn’t see the person on the shore any more. I felt as if pretty soon
I would hear of something terrible.
Once in my class room a pupil had a kind of an attack on account of his
heart, and they carried him out. And they said we should go on with our
lessons, but anyway it seemed kind of funny and afterwards we found out
he was dead. So kind of that’s the same way I felt that afternoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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