These, and other cries of victory, greeted our hero's ears as he allowed his oars to rest on the water flat, while he recovered his wind after the heart-breaking finish.
"Well, Dock could beat him if he was in training," said Pud doggedly.
"Not in a thousand years!" was Nat's positive assertion.
The boys crowded to the float that marked the finish of the course. Jack reached it first, and stepped out of his shell, being greeted by his friends. Then Dock rowed slowly up. His distress showed plainly in his puffy, white face.
He got out clumsily, and staggered as he clambered upon the float.
"Hard luck, old man," said Jack good-humoredly.
"I don't want your sympathy!" snapped Dock. "I'll row you again, and I'll beat you!"
Jack had held out his hand, but the bully ignored it. He turned aside, and whether the float tilted, or whether Snaith tottered because of a cramp in his leg, was never known, but he staggered for a moment, tried unsuccessfully to recover his balance, and then plunged into the lake at one of the deepest spots, right off the float.
These were some of the expressions the excited lads shouted as they surged forward to look at the spot where Dock had disappeared. A string of bubbles and some swirling eddies were all that marked the place.
The float began to tilt with the weight of so many boys on one edge.
"Stand back!" cried Jack Ranger. "Stand back, or we'll all be in the lake!"
They heeded his words, and moved toward the middle of the platform.
"Some one ought to go in after him," said Pud Armstrong, his teeth fairly chattering from fright and nervousness. "I--I can't swim."
He began pulling off the sweater which some of the lads had helped put on him, when he stepped from the shell all perspiration.
He poised for an instant on the edge of the float, looking down into the dark waters, beneath which Dock had disappeared, and then dived in.
"Get one of the boats out. Maybe he won't come up near the float," ordered Sam Chalmers, and several lads hurriedly shoved out into the lake a broad barge, which could safely be used by Jack in getting Dock out of the water, if he was fortunate enough to find the youth.
"Queer he doesn't come up," spoke Glen in a whisper.
"Who--Dock or Jack?" asked Bony, cracking his finger knuckles in double relays.