WHEN the biggest lake there is chooses to go on one of her very best rampages, even the bravest of mariners make as speedily as possible for safe harbors. At midnight, therefore, following a certain blustery day in early summer, it was not strange that the huge, storm-tossed lake appeared, for as far as eye could reach, absolutely deserted.
Somewhere, however, on that fearfully tumultuous sea, one direly threatened craft was still abroad, and, what is a greater marvel, still afloat. At best, the ancient yawl was but a poor excuse for a ship; now, at her worst, she was little more than a raft. Driven before the wind, tossed here and there by the buffeting waves, she carried a solitary passenger and only a little one at that.
Indeed, he wasn't at all the kind of sailor that one would expect to find sailing dangerous seas all alone at midnight, for the solitary mariner, adrift in all that wilderness of tumbling water, was a twelve-year-old boy.
There was no sail to the little boat—that had been torn away in the furious gale—but a short, stumpy mast remained. To that the boy, happily unconscious of his plight, was firmly but rather clumsily bound by means of many folds of stout fish-net wrapped tightly about his slender body. Also about his waist hung a battered life-preserver.
The lad had been fastened there by other hands than his own, for most of the knots were out of his reach. The little chap's head hung forward; his eyes were closed; he no longer heard the roar of the sea or felt the cold or suffered from hunger; but in spite of this merciful oblivion, he still had a life to lose—and was in very grave danger of losing it.
It isn't fair, of course, to leave a really attractive little lad in a plight like this; with darkness and an angry sea all about him; with, seemingly no possible help at hand, since the nearest coast was still many miles distant and supposedly uninhabited.
Yet, in this truly terrible predicament, this poor boy—strange little hero of a girls' story—must remain until you've learned just how a certain "Whale" (you must admit that it isn't usual to find whales near fresh water) contributed to his rescue.
To discover exactly how it all happened we must go way back to the very beginning; and the beginning of it all was Bettie.