CHAPTER I
Straight for the Rocks
"Wonder if we'll be able to make the football eleven when we go to Lenox High."
Rooster Long stopped drawing pictures in the dust with the toe of his shoe and looked up at his companion inquiringly.
Garry Grayson, former captain and quarterback of the Hill Street eleven, shook his head doubtfully.
"I don't think we have a Chinaman's chance of making the team our first year in high," he replied. "Lenox will have plenty of material, good seasoned material, to draw on from the three upper classes. No reason why they should turn to the freshmen for recruits."
"Except that there are going to be some mighty good players among the freshmen this year," chimed in another boy, who emerged from the house at that moment and sat down on the step near which Garry was standing. "Maybe I'm speaking out of my turn, and there are some who won't agree with me—so much the worse for them—but I certainly think we turned out some pretty good players last year, if you should ask me."
The speaker was Bill Sherwood, a tall, well-developed lad who had played center on the Hill Street grammar school eleven, and was affectionately known to his mates as "Big Bill."
"You said it," agreed Nick Danter, a rather rangy, well-knit youth who lay stretched out at full length on the porch. "I'd go far enough to say that some of them could give the high school fellows a pretty nifty tussle at this minute."
"That goes not only for our Hill Street boys, but for some of the fellows of the Cherry and Webster Street schools," put in Ted Dillingham, stocky and muscular, as he leaned lazily against the finishing post of the porch railing. "Look at Pete Maddern and Tom Allison! They're no slouches when it comes to playing football, and I hear they're going to high this fall."
The boys were gathered about and on the porch of the Sherwood summer bungalow on the shores of picturesque Bass Lake, to which Garry Grayson, Rooster Long, Nick Danter and Ted Dillingham had been invited for a two week's stay, an invitation that they had gladly accepted, as they were the warmest and most congenial of friends.
All of them had graduated from the Hill Street grammar school of Lenox the preceding term, and were planning to enter the high school in the fall. The summer was nearly at an end, and they were looking forward eagerly to the new experience in store for them. Books, however, were not foremost in their thoughts at the moment.
All of them were football players, loved the great game, and had acquitted themselves well on the Hill Street football team that had won the grammar school championship the preceding season from their rivals of the Cherry and Webster Street schools. Garry Grayson especially had proved himself a remarkable player for a boy of his age.
But, good as they had been on a grammar school eleven, they knew that the high school was a different matter—all the difference, as Nick Danter had at one time expressed it, that there was "between being big frogs in a little puddle and little frogs in a big puddle."
But despite the cold water thrown on his hopes by his chums, Rooster Long still held tenaciously to his ambition.
"I don't see why we can't make a try for the team, anyway," he persisted, with a long face. "Just because we're freshmen doesn't say we have to be dumbbells and sit back and take just whatever is handed to us."
"Of course not," Garry agreed, with a touch of irony. "There's nothing to prevent our making a noise and trying to draw the attention of the upper classes to our humble position at the foot of the throne. Though, of course, there's just a chance," he admitted, his eyes kindling, "that our victories over Cherry and Webster may give us Hill Streeters a little boost even with the high and mighty Lenox fellows."
"Gee, I sure would like to be on that team!" said Rooster, with a yearning shake of his head. "They're just one degree below the college teams."
"Come out of your trance!" admonished Bill Sherwood. "We won't have a look in."
"I'm afraid you're right," agreed Garry. "If we get even as far as the scrub this year we'll be lucky. Maybe they'll let us be doormats for the regulars."
"Gee, you fellows are about as cheerful as a funeral!" cried Rooster, giving a vicious kick to an unoffending stone. "You give me the jim-jams. I've got to do something to get my mind off my troubles."
Bill Sherwood laughed lazily.
"Nothing to get so het up about, Rooster," he drawled. "We won't be the only freshmen at Lenox High this fall, you know. There will be plenty of others biting their nails on the sidelines and telling any one who will listen that they could do a mighty sight better than those boobs of regulars."
"They say that misery loves company, but that doesn't cut any ice with me," and Rooster frowned mightily. "I'd rather dodge Lenox altogether than to stand on the sidelines and watch the other fellows play."
"He's getting wild," observed the grinning Garry. He yawned and raised his arms above his head in a luxurious stretch. "What do you say we go in for a swim, Bill? That may help cool him off."
"Just what I was going to suggest, nothing else but," replied Bill, rising with alacrity. "Come on, let's jump into our bathing suits."
This formality was accomplished in a very short time, and the boys were soon out of the house and making a dash through the woods toward the shimmering waters of Bass Lake.
The Sherwood bungalow boasted a private dock from which the lads often went fishing and swimming. Bill had a canoe and also a cranky little motorboat that usually spoke out of its turn.
"It goes when you think the motor's dead," Bill had said, when describing the eccentric craft to his chums, "and it stops without the sign of a reason just when everything seems in fine working order. The only thing that has any effect on it is a good talking to, for it knows its master's voice."
He threw out his chest pompously as he spoke, but doubled up promptly when Garry poked him in the stomach.
"What do you think I am, a punching bag?" he demanded in an injured tone.
"Oh, did I hit you?" asked Garry in mock contrition. "My hand must have slipped."
At the moment the boys had no use for either craft, for on that particular afternoon they intended to be in the water and not on it.
They sat for a time on the edge of the dock, basking enjoyably in the sun, knowing that the warmer they got the more enjoyable would be the plunge into the cool waters of the lake.
It was a pretty sheet of water, with numerous miniature bays and jutting points to break the monotony of the shore line. There were many summer bungalows like the Sherwoods' cuddled among the trees near the shore of the lake, and on the north side was a fairly pretentious hotel.
On such a bright afternoon the lake was bound to be studded with the boats of pleasure seekers. Canoes slipped with graceful, gliding motion from one inlet to another, while motorboats of all descriptions chugged busily over the gleaming surface.
"All this will soon be over," remarked Garry, with a shade of regret in his voice. "I hate to see winter come."
"But before winter comes fall, and in the fall comes football," chanted Bill.
Rooster Long gave his chum an injured look.
"I thought we came here to get our minds off of football for a while," he complained. "You fellows can do what you like, but I'm going in swimming."
"You bet you are!" declared Garry, and gave Rooster a push that landed him splashing and sputtering in the seven feet of water at the edge of the dock.
Shaking the water from his eyes, Rooster shook a fist at the grinning Garry.
"Come down here and try that again," he cried.
"Come up here and I will," retorted Garry.
He raised his hands above his head, bent his body in the form of a bow, and clove the water with as clean and pretty a dive as one could wish to see.
Coming to the surface, puffing and blowing, he found himself entwined in a pair of strong arms that he discovered a moment later belonged to Rooster.
Then ensued a hilarious, aquatic wrestling match, in which each of them swallowed a good deal of water.
Bill stood on the end of the dock, rooting now for one, now for the other of his guests, until in the excitement he lost his balance and fell among them throwing the combatants into temporary confusion.
"He's busting up the fight!" gurgled Rooster. "Let's put him under."
And so, as often happens to the innocent bystander, Bill was set upon by both Garry and Rooster and finally was forced to duck and swim some distance under water to elude his tormentors.
"You had to run," called out Garry gleefully, and Bill shook a wet fist at him.
"I didn't run, I swam," he returned, grinning. "I can lick you one at a time, but two together are too many for me."
Ted Dillingham and Nick Danter had by this time come in with a splash, but they had scarcely touched the water when Garry's muscles suddenly became taut and he stared at an object out on the lake.
"Look at that motorboat!" he cried, as the other boys followed the direction of his gaze. "Must be going fifty miles an hour."
"Some fool driving," remarked Bill carelessly.
"I'll say that he's a fool!" cried Garry excitedly. "Look, fellows, he's heading straight for those rocks on the south shore!"
It was a moment before the other lads took in the seriousness of the situation.
Then with a yell Bill Sherwood started swimming for the dock.
Garry guessed his intention, and reached there at the same moment, the other boys close behind their comrades.
Bill jumped into his own eccentric motorboat, Garry tumbling in after him. By the time he had loosened the rope that tied the boat to the dock all five were on board.
For once the engine worked without protest. Bill, who was a master hand at working the craft urged the cranky motor to its limit and headed the nose of the boat toward the south shore.
The drivers of the strange motorboat were steering crazily, and those in the small craft who found themselves in the way turned tail and scuttled for cover.
"Why don't they turn out?" exclaimed Garry, in a frenzy of anxiety. "Are they blind? Can't they see that they're heading right for the rocks?"
"They're either idiots or they don't know how to run a boat," muttered Bill, as he bent himself to the task of getting out of his engine all the speed possible.
"Or else they've lost their heads and are too scared to try to steer at all," commented Rooster. "Gee, but that was a close shave!" he added, as the strange craft barely missed running down a canoe.
Bill's boat was now whizzing along like a comet, and the distance between it and the other craft was rapidly diminishing. The boys could now see quite clearly the inmates of the runaway vessel.
There were but two of them, boys apparently of about the age of Garry and his chums, and they seemed to be arguing about the possession of the wheel.
Garry made a megaphone of his hands and shouted:
"Turn out! You're heading for the rocks. Turn out!"
Even as he spoke there came a flash of fire, a sharp report, and the motorboat crashed against the rocks!