CHAPTER XXIII

GOOD NEWS TRAVELS SLOWLY

The crowd of scatterbrained youngsters were smitten speechless for the moment. They stared at Bobby Blake, and then looked at each other curiously. Pee Wee was the first to find his voice.

"Aw, cheese it, Bobby!" he drawled. "You're kidding us."

"No. We've done a mean thing. We'll get them into trouble over to their school--"

"Good enough!" cried Howell Purdy, in delight.

"And maybe we'll get into trouble because of it, too," went on Bobby, seriously. "But whether we do, or we don't, we oughtn't to leave those fellows over there on the island all night. It's a mean trick."

"Say! haven't they played many a mean trick on us?" demanded Pee Wee, excitedly.

"That has nothing to do with it," said Bobby, still seriously. "It's cold and wet on that island. Maybe they are all soaking wet from the rain-storm. Suppose they should get cold--all of them--some of them--only _one_ of them?"

This was rather a grave way to put it. Bobby was not much more thoughtful than other boys of his age--and he not eleven; but the thing had gripped him hard.

"I tell you," he said, quietly, "if none of you will go back with me, I'll go alone."

"Shucks!" exclaimed Pee Wee, "you couldn't row up there alone, Bobby Blake, let alone tugging those four boats after you."

"Well! and he doesn't have to--see?" snapped Fred Martin, dragging on his cap over his red hair. "I guess _two_ of us can do something." He grinned rather sheepishly at Bobby.

"Three," said Sparrow Bangs, briefly.

"Me, too," said the Mouser. "You can stay home, if you want to, Pee Wee. _I'm_ going."

"Oh--very well!" groaned the fat boy. "You can count me in."

"And me! And me!" cried several.

In the end there were two boats full of volunteers who left the Rockledge boathouse, known only to the man who had charge of it, and rowed up to Monckton's farm. There they dragged the four Belden boats out of the mud, and towed them across to the island.

It was pretty dark, for there was no moon. The marooned youngsters heard them coming and began to shout, believing that it was a rescue party from their own school.

Bobby and Fred stood up and yelled to them to come down to the shore for their boats. There was a good deal of bandying talk, and the two sets of boys said some sharp things to each other, but they separated without a fight.

"They'll tell, of course, and the Old Doctor will make an investigation," said Fred, as they pulled for home.

"Sure!" groaned Shiner.

"But it won't be so bad for us as it would have been if we'd left them there for their own folks to find, and kept their boats hid," Pee Wee observed, with more thoughtfulness than he usually showed.

"And the Belden boys will be a deal more comfortable, eh?" chuckled Bobby.

There _was_ an investigation. The Doctor conducted it himself. He went "back to the year one," as Barry Gray said, and considered all the causes of the rivalry between the two schools, and what each had done to the other.

The hot potato fight was taken into consideration, as well as the fact that the Belden schoolboys had once stolen every boat the Rockledge boys possessed, and hidden them for a week.

Then he rendered his decision: No party of boys without a teacher was to go to any of the islands. None of the boys were to venture across the lake to the Belden shore.

These decisions were repeated by the head of the Belden School, and from that time on there was less friction between the two institutions.

But, meanwhile, Dr. Raymond had heard all about Bobby Blake's action in the matter of the return of the boats to the marooned boys. He said nothing to Bobby about it, but he talked with his assistants.

This, too, made Bobby more popular with his mates. It had been the right thing to do, and, after all, boys respect a boy who is willing to do the right thing, even if it may make him unpopular for the time being.

The popularity that Bobby was winning at Rockledge School, however, was of a lasting kind. If Bobby said a thing, he meant it. If he made a promise, he stuck to it. He was no shirk, and no "goody-goody," and it began to be whispered around (goodness only knows how the story started) that Bobby might have a chance for the Medal of Honor if it was not for "Old Leith."

"What's Leith got it in for him for?" demanded the hot-headed Fred Martin. "What's Bobby ever done to him?"

"Something about Bobby's not giving away a fight," said Pee Wee, who had got the news pretty straight from a waitress, who had heard Mr. Leith and Mr. Carrin talking about it.

"Aw, get out!" muttered Fred, rather abashed. He suddenly remembered the fight he had started with Sparrow.

"Never was a Lower School boy yet that won the medal," said How Purdy.

"But we'd all pull for him--wouldn't we?" demanded Mouser. "I like Bob all right."

"I do, too," said Skeets Brody. "He was the only fellow that would stay in and play checkers with me, when I had the sore throat."

"He's done a lot of things for me," admitted Howell. "I haven't forgotten them."

"Well!" sighed Pee Wee. "I couldn't count the times Bobby's given me his pudding at supper."

"I guess we all like him," Sparrow said. "He's square as he can be. Old Leith hasn't anything against him, I don't believe. It's just his meanness."

"No," said Pee Wee. "It's because Bobby wouldn't tell on somebody. I put it up to Bobby myself, and he got mad and told me to mind my eye," and the fat boy grinned.

"Well! it gets me," said Shiner. "There haven't been many fights this year that Bobby could have been in. And he's not quarrelsome."

Fred said nothing. He was thinking hard, and from the expression on his face, it was apparent that his thoughts were not of a pleasant nature.

Bobby Blake certainly would have been surprised, had he known how his mates were talking about him. He went on his usual course now-a-days without much thought for the Medal of Honor.

Only, he did his best. For his absent mother's and father's sake, he did his best.

Where were they? The question was with him always. Deadened somewhat by time, the pain of his loss smarted just the same. He seldom mentioned the mystery, even to Fred. Nevertheless, there was at least one time in every day when he remembered it.

He was as earnest in his prayers at night for his parents' safety as ever he had been. He believed that some time he should hear good news.

It is famous that bad news travels quickly, while good news has leaden feet. It was so in this case.

The spring advanced. Mr. and Mrs. Blake had sailed from New York early in September, and nine months had nearly gone since then. The discovery of burned wreckage from the ship on which they had sailed was all the news that had ever come back to the United States regarding it.

There arrived in the port of Baltimore one day a bluff-bowed, frowsy-looking old two-stick schooner, with a tarnished figure-head under her patched bowsprit, dirty sails, and a bottom undoubtedly thick with barnacles.

She was the _Ethelina_, and she loafed into her dock as though she had never hurried within the knowledge of her owners. One of her owners stood upon her deck and gave orders--Captain Adoniram Speed.

His crew was partly made up of South American half-breeds, and the bulk of the crew of the steamship on which the Blakes had sailed, so long before, from New York.

The captain brought letters for various people from a trading station far up a tributary of the Amazon. Had not a sharp reporter, nosing about for news on the Baltimore docks, gotten into conversation with Captain Speed, it is likely that the newspapers would never have obtained the full story of the loss of the steamship in question.

She had burned only a few hundred miles off the mouth of the Amazon. It was rough weather at the time and two of the boats' crews and most of the passengers had lost their lives before the _Ethelina_ came loafing along and had taken the remainder of the survivors aboard.

The _Ethelina_ was bound for an up-river station. She had no reason for touching at Para or any other big city of Brazil. She kept right on her course, and her course chanced to be the route to be followed by Mr. and Mrs. Blake, who were among the few passengers rescued.

The old hooker sailed up the Amazon, and several hundred miles up the tributary on which was situated the town of Samratam, which was the Blakes' goal.

The Blakes left letters for the captain of the _Ethelina_ to bring back to civilization. Captain Speed had not considered it necessary to hurry these letters along.

He had waited to bring them himself, to mail at Baltimore. Good news surely had traveled slowly in this case. Almost at the time the old schooner was being warped into her dock at Baltimore, Mr. and Mrs. Blake, in good health, expected to leave Samratam for the United States!

The letters came in good time to Clinton, and to Rockledge School. Dr. Raymond sat before his great, flat-topped desk one warm May morning staring at a letter written on thin notepaper, with a packet of similar letters, wrapped in an oiled-paper wrapper, before him on the desk.

Somehow his spectacles were clouded, and he had to take them off and wipe them twice before he could finish reading the business-like lines.

The second time he wiped the glasses and set them astride his big nose, he saw a small figure standing in the open doorway.

"Ha! Robert!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, sir."

"I sent for you, Robert," said the master of Rockledge School, in a very gruff voice--gruffer than usual, in fact.

"Yes, sir?" returned Bobby, timidly.

In spite of everything, he could not help being more than a little frightened of Dr. Raymond. He was so big, and he was so gruff when he spoke, and he had such searching eyes--usually--when he looked at one.

But stop! There was something entirely different about Dr. Raymond's eyes on this occasion. If Bobby Blake had not known that it was impossible, he would have believed that there were tears in the Doctor's eyes.

"Robert," the gentleman said, finally, seeming to have some difficulty in getting his words out. "Robert, did you ever hear the old saying that 'no news is good news'?"

Bobby had no answer. His lips opened. He really _thought_ he said "Yes, sir." But there was such a roaring in his ears, and his heart suddenly pounded so hard, that he could scarcely hear.

The furniture began to go around him in a sort of stately dance--and the good doctor went with the furniture! It was very curious. Bobby tried to rub his eyes free of the water that welled up, with his coat sleeves.

"Yes, Robert; 'no news is good news.' We haven't heard for months from those whom we wished to hear from. But always I have told you to keep up heart--"

Bobby could stand no more. He flung himself forward, around the corner of the great desk. He grabbed at the Doctor's coatsleeve before he could swim away from him again.

"My mother! my father! You've heard--?"

"They're all right, Robert! they're all right!" exclaimed the Doctor--and did his voice break strangely as he said it? "There, there, my boy! They're safe as can be and here's a whole packet of letters for you from them. Don't cry, my boy--"

But Bobby wasn't crying. It seemed to him that he never should cry again.

"Tell me!" he gasped, still clinging to the Doctor's arm. "Did--did she get her feet wet? Or is she all right? She didn't get the--the bron-skeeters, did she? Father was always afraid of that, if she got cold."