declared Wynifred.

"Hurray!" exclaimed Ferd. "Wait a bit, Tubby; don't wear your poor little self to a grease spot trying to throw that rope over the mill."

Tubby, nothing loath, sat down and breathed heavily. The day _was_ hot in spite of the high wind.

Wyn got all the shoe strings and tied them together, with a bolt fastened to the lower end for a sinker, and let it down to the ground.

There Tubby attached the end of the clothes line and they pulled it up.

It was long enough, and strong enough, and Dave carefully raised the bucket of water--and oh! how good it tasted to the thirsty prisoners.

They were all provided with cups, for the Academy teachers and the Denton mothers were rather insistent on that point.

"But, oh, golly!" burst forth Frank, "if they'd only made us always carry an emergency ration."

"We didn't expect to be cast away on a desert island in this fashion,"

said Dave.

But Wyn had another idea.

"There are melons on the back porch. I saw them there this morning. Go get us a lot, Tubby. Send 'em up by the bucket-full. And there are tomatoes in the garden, and some summer apples on that tree by the fence corner. We'll make it all right with Mrs. Prosser. Why, say! we sha'n't starve."

"I'll get you some eggs if you want 'em," suggested the willing youth.

"I hear the hens cackling."

But all objected to raw eggs and thought the melons and fresh tomatoes would suffice.

"You go back to camp and report," ordered Dave, through the window. "The prof, and Mrs. Havel will be having conniption fits if these girls don't show up pretty soon. Tell 'em we're all right--but goodness knows we want the wind to stop blowing."

It did not seem, however, as though the wind had any such intention.

After Tubby Blaisdell departed it blew even stronger.

It was hard to keep the whole party in good temper. The imprisonment was getting on their nerves. Besides, the sky was growing darker, although it was not yet mid-afternoon; and not long after the fat youth was out of sight, heavy drops of rain began to fall.

Rather, the wind whipped the raindrops in at the tower window. Patter, patter, patter, they fell, faster and faster, and in the distance thunder rumbled.

The picnicking farmers should be home ahead of this storm; yet, if they came, they could not stop the sails of the windmill. The shaft groaned and smoked, but Dave kept the oil cups filled.

Nearer and nearer came the thunder, and the lightning began to flash.

Some of the girls were frightened. Nor was this a pleasant place in which to be imprisoned during an electrical storm. The tall, revolving arms seemed just the things to attract the lightning.

They all were glad--boys as well as girls--to retire to the ground floor of the mill while the elements shrieked overhead and the rain pounded upon the roof and the sails. It was really a most unpleasant situation.

CHAPTER XXIII

WYN HITS SOMETHING

In the midst of the storm a voice hailed them from outside. Dave went to the doorway and saw--through the falling rain--Farmer Prosser, standing by his horses' heads. He had just brought his family home from the picnic and they had scurried into the house.

"What are you doing in there?" demanded the farmer. "Can't you stop the sails?"

Dave explained, making it as light for Ferd as possible.

"Well! I've been expecting something like this ever since the mill was put up. We can't do anything about it now. But I believe the wind will shift soon. And if it does, perhaps I can stop the sails from outside here."

It was nearly dark, however, and quite supper-time, before the farmer's prophecy came true. Then the rain suddenly ceased to fall (the thunder and lightning had long since rolled away into the distance) and the wind dropped.

The farmer and his man rigged a brake to fall against the narrow breadth of shaft which extended outside of the mill wall, and so brought pressure to bear upon the revolving axle. This helped bring the sails to a stop.

How thankfully the Go-Aheads and the Busters got out of that tower, it would be difficult to express. Professor Skillings had started up through the rain to see what he could do; but on the way he had picked up a white pebble washed out of the roadside by the rain, and there being something peculiar about it, he stopped under a hedge to examine it by the light of his pocket lamp. Then he must needs proceed with his ever-present geological hammer to break the stone in two. Long after dark his electric lamp was flashing down there on the hillside like some huge wavering firefly.

Not that he could have done a thing to help his young friends. Mrs.

Prosser, the farmer's wife, had the most practical idea of anybody; for, the minute the boys and girls were out of the mill, she insisted that they troop into the farmhouse kitchen and there sit down to her long table and "get outside of" great bowls of milk and bread, with a host of ginger cookies on the side.

So the incident ended happily after all, though Ferdinand Roberts's spirits drooped for several days. It was well for him to suffer in spirit--as Frankie said: it might teach him a lesson. And he had to pay the farmer for the damage he had done to the machinery.

Ferdinand never had any money. He spent his allowance in advance, borrowing of the other Busters whenever he could. When he got money from home he had to sit down and apportion it all out to his creditors, and then had to begin borrowing again.

He had hard work sc.r.a.ping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser; but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped--only Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd's mind that it was not honorable to borrow from a girl.

However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to the snapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple of days afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought he wanted.

"Oh, Tubby!" he cried. "Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must have that."

Tubby looked at him out of heavy-lidded eyes, and croaked: "Snow again, brother; I don't get your drift!"

When Ferd went from one to the other of his mates they all refused--if not quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually a pauper, with all lines of credit shut to him. It made him serious.

"If all you fellows, and the old prof., should suddenly die on me up here--what would I do?" gasped Ferd. "Why--I'd have to walk home!"

"Or swim," said Dave, heartlessly. "You'd p.a.w.n your canoe, I s'pose."

Speaking of swimming, that was an art in which several of the boys, as well as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside the early morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either at Green Knoll Camp, or off the boys' camp on Gannet Island.

The boys built a good diving raft and anch.o.r.ed it in deep water after much hard work. The good swimmers among the girls--especially Wyn and Grace--liked to paddle over to the raft and dive from it.

Late in the afternoon the Go-Aheads had come to the raft in their canoes dressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had gone off on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not in sight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.

"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. "Now we can have a good time without those trifling boys bothering us. I'm going to learn to dive properly, Wyn."

"Sure," returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. "Now's the time," and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.

The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vast enjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat upon the edge of the float to rest.

Wyn dived overboard.

She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under the surface she turned and went deeper. She was like an otter in the water, and having stuffed her ears with cotton she felt prepared to remain below a long time.