Dan glanced up with a start, backing water. They had now pa.s.sed in under the shadow of trees, for the sun was low, and it was somewhat dark and gloomy in there.

"It's queer for bushes to be growing so far out from sh.o.r.e," muttered Tom, "and it shows how shallow the water must be about here.

You had better back water out of here, Danny."

Dalzell was about to do so when his glance fell on something that halted his arm.

In the same moment Tom Reade saw the object that had arrested Dan's attention.

From between the bushes peered a pair of deep-set, frightened eyes that looked out from the haggard, despairing face of a man whose head alone was visible.

Just for the moment neither Tom nor Dalzell could really guess whether the face belonged to the living or the dead. The sight caused cold shivers to run up and down their spines, for that face was ghastly and haunting in the extreme.

But quickly Tom Reade found his voice sufficiently to ask huskily:

"What's your trouble, my friend?"

CHAPTER IX

THE START OF A BAD NIGHT

Without noise, leaving barely a ripple behind, that head sank from view. It had vanished in an instant before the eyes of the two thoroughly startled high school boys.

"He's drowning now!" gasped Dan, as the head failed to bob up again into view. "Oh, Tom, we must save him!"

"Wait!" said Reade, in a quivering voice. His eyes expressed uncertainty as to how he should act.

"But he's drowning. You see, he hasn't come up again!" Dalzell insisted.

"Drowning---in water shallow enough for small bushes to grow from the bottom?" demanded Reade. "Of course not! But what does it mean---and why didn't the fellow speak?"

"Perhaps---i---i---it was a---dead man," suggested Dalzell.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," replied Reade. "I---I almost thought I saw the man's eyelids move."

"I thought so, too," agreed Dan, "but now I'm inclined to believe that we didn't. Wait! I'm going to get close to the bushes."

Dan drove the paddle into the water a few times, bringing the canoe up alongside the bushes, when it was seen that these were standing up from a square framework of wood.

"Now, what do you think of that?" asked Reade in perplexity.

"These are freshly cut bushes, that have been fastened to this frame to-day. The frame will float wherever wind or current may take it. I thought this was shallow water. I'll soon know."

Tom had, among his tackle, a line with a sinker attached. He tossed the sinker over the side of the canoe, paying out the line until the sinker touched bottom. Then he pulled the line in again, carefully measuring by his arm as much of the line as was wet.

"Danny," he announced solemnly, "at this point the water is from twenty-seven to thirty feet deep."

"Then that man did drown!" breathed Dalzell, his face as white as chalk.

"Of course he did," Tom agreed, "provided he was alive when we saw him."

"But he had to be alive," protested Dan, "or else he couldn't have nailed the framework together and decorated it with branches from bushes."

"That is, if the man we saw made the frame," propounded Reade in a very solemn voice.

It was a shock to both of them. The whole incident had been uncanny and unreal, but the horror of that haggard, haunting face was still strong upon both of the beholders.

"Tom, we simply must get off our clothes and dive to see what we can do to find that poor fellow," urged Dalzell.

"All right," a.s.sented Reade. "I'll do all the diving myself, Danny, if you'll take command and give your orders. Where shall I dive? The bushes have already shifted position. We're floating away from the spot, too. Just where do you want me to make the first dive?"

"I don't know," Dan Dalzell confessed. "The whole affair has given me the creeps, I think."

"I know it has done that to me," smiled Tom unsteadily. "Whew!

I'll dream of that face to-night---all night long! Dan, there seems to be just about one chance in a thousand that that man will reach sh.o.r.e. Let's keep the craft headed to the sh.o.r.e, and watch for some minutes to come. At the same time, if we see a sign of the poor fellow, we'll swim to him, or paddle to him as fast as we know how."

Both boys knew, inwardly, that they would be heartily glad to get away from what seemed plainly to them to be a haunted spot.

Yet neither cared to admit his dread to the other. So, talking rather busily, they remained on the spot for fully another ten minutes.

"We won't see anything come out of the water now," Tom a.s.serted at last. "Even if we do, it will be a drowned man."

"I guess we may as well get back to camp," Danny agreed. "Yet it is going to be an awfully creepy night for all of us, with this weird mystery of the lake on our minds."

"Don't paddle yet," begged Tom. "I'll give a hail, and see if that brings any answer."

Raising his voice, Reade shouted l.u.s.tily:

"h.e.l.lo, there, friend? Are you safe? Want any help?"

"Anything we can do for you, friend?" bawled Dan Dalzell, in his most resonant tone.

Only the mocking echoes of their own questions came back to them.

"Beat the water with the paddle. Danny," advised Reade after they had waited for some moments. "We've more than a mile to go. Whip up the water. If you get tired, pa.s.s the paddle back to me."

"I'm not sorry to get away from that place," breathed Dalzell, after at least a hundred l.u.s.ty strokes.

"Nor I," confessed Reade. "I'm beginning to get a headache already from trying to figure out what it all meant. Danny, describe that haunting face just as you saw it."

"Ugh! I hate to think about it again," protested Dalzell.

"You'll think about it more than once," retorted Tom. "You won't be able to help that, I promise you. So go ahead and describe the face as you saw it."

Dan did so, Tom listening attentively.

"Then that wasn't a case of imagination," Tom declared gravely.

"If we had imagined it, each would have seen a different face.