The diving raft was a long distance out from the beach, because the sandy bottom here sloped very gradually. This part of the island was ideal for swimming and bathing. If it was finally proved that the old Padriac Haney estate belonged to little Henrietta, she would control the longest strip of beach on the island.
Amy flashed a glance over her shoulder to see how close they were pursued, and almost lost stroke.
"Come on!" panted Jessie. "Don't let them beat you."
"Ain't--go-ing--to," gasped her chum, in four short breaths.
They were more than half way to the raft, and it really seemed as though the stronger--and longer--arms of the two college boys were not aiding them to overtake the Roselawn girls. The latter began to congratulate each other upon this--with glances. They did not waste any more breath in speech.
Rising high to change stroke, Jessie turned on her side and did the over-hand. It heaved her ahead of her chum for a yard or so; and it likewise enabled her to see over the raft. The raft chanced to be deserted, nor were there any swimmers between her and the boat of the lifeguard beyond the raft.
The man in the boat suddenly stood up. He began waving his arms and shouting. As he was looking shoreward Jessie thought he must be cheering her and her chum on. She forged still farther ahead of Amy, and the lifeguard became more energetic in his motions.
Suddenly he dropped upon the seat of his boat, grabbed the oars, and pulled the bow of the craft around, heading it seemed, for the raft. He did act peculiarly.
From behind her Jessie heard faintly a cry from her chum:
"Oh, Jess! What's that? What is it?"
"Why, it is the lifeguard," rejoined Jessie Norwood, flashing another glance over her shoulder, but continuing to thrash forward at her very best speed.
"No, no! That thing! In the water!" At first Jessie saw nothing ahead but the raft. She thought the lifeguard was hurrying to the raft to meet Amy and herself if they won the race. Another glance that she flashed back swept the smooth, rolling sea as far as Darry and Burd, endeavoring to overcome the handicap they had given the two girl chums.
It was only then that Jessie realized that something must be happening--some threatening thing that she did not understand. From the rear Darry's hail reached Jessie's ear:
"Turn back! Come back, Jess!"
"Why! what does he think?" considered Jessie, amazed. "That I am going to stop and let him and Burd beat us? I--guess--not!"
Then she heard the voice of the lifeguard. He was driving his boat inshore with mighty strokes; but he sat facing shoreward, too, using his oars back-handed. He shouted:
"Shark! Shark! Look out for the shark!"
And behind Jessie Norwood her chum took up the cry:
"Shark! Oh, Jess! Shark!"
The word, which had never meant much to Jessie Norwood in her life before, being merely the name of a quite unknown fish, suddenly became the most important of words! She whirled over and took up the breast stroke. She rose high in the water again to look.
Off at one side and seemingly swimming toward them from a tangent, came a gray, sail-like thing, the like of which the Roselawn girl had never seen before. She accepted as true however the identification of the lifeguard. He should know.
The race to the raft became suddenly a double race. More than ever did Jessie Norwood wish to win it! She desired to outswim the dangerous fish of which she had heard such terrible stories.
CHAPTER XIII--MORE THAN ONE ADVENTURE
Jessie was badly frightened, but she was not too scared to swim as hard as she could for the diving raft. The lifeguard drove his boat around the end of the raft toward the gray, sail-like object which had so startled them all. Jessie remembered of reading that the dorsal fin of a shark shows above water when it swims at the surface. This odd looking thing must be it--it must be!
She measured the distance between it and herself with some calculation.
It came on in a halting, undecided way. Perhaps the shark had not yet caught sight of any of the swimmers. Jessie flung up her arm and shouted at the top of her voice to her chum:
"Come on! Come on! Don't let him get you!"
Amy was struggling so hard to reach the raft now that she had no breath left for speech. Jessie saw her splashing on in her wake. Behind, the boys were making a great splashing too, and Jessie realized that it was for an object. The shark might be frightened away if they made disturbance enough in the water.
Jessie was now very near the raft and the other three were bunching up not far behind her. The lifeguard shot by in his boat, yelling like mad.
Darry shouted:
"Get aboard the raft, girls! Burd and I will beat him off till you are landed!"
"You come right on here, Darrington Drew!" sputtered his sister. "What good will you ever be if you get your leg bit off?"
Jessie reached the raft and seized a loop of rope hanging from it. If it had not been for this assistance she doubted if she could have hauled herself out of the water. When Amy arrived, her chum was lying over the edge of the refuge, and reached one arm out for her.
"Quick! Quick!" cried Jessie.
"Do--don't scare me so!" gasped Amy. "I--I feel just as though he was nibbling at my toes right now!"
But it seemed no laughing matter to Jessie Norwood. Her chum, however, would find a joke in even the most serious circumstance. And the moment she lay on the raft beside Jessie she began to laugh, gaspingly.
"This is no laughing matter!" Jessie declared. "How can you, Amy? Darry and Burd----"
At that instant a wild shout rose from the two collegians and from the lifeguard who had rowed so energetically to their rescue. Amy broke off suddenly in her nervous laughter.
"He's got 'em!" she shrieked. "Oh! Oh!"
But, strange though it seemed to her, Jessie realized that Darry and Burd were laughing. And the astonished expletives that the guard emitted did not seem to show fear.
"What is the matter?" Jessie demanded, standing up.
"And where is the shark?" asked Amy, likewise scrambling to her feet.
The boys were hanging to the side of the guard's boat. He was fishing for something in the water with an oar. He finally got the object and raised it aloft.
"What is it?" repeated Jessie.
"The shark!" shrieked her chum.
It actually was all the shark there was--a pair of partly deflated swimming wings which, carried here and there by the wind, had looked like a shark's dorsal fin at a distance.
"Good thing you girls saw it," declared Darry, when the boys lumbered along to the raft. "If you hadn't been so scared you never would have beat us. Would they, Burd?"
"Of course not," agreed his friend. "And how Jess can swim--when there is a man-eating shark after her!"
"Don't make fun," Jessie said, somewhat exasperated. "It might have been a shark. Then where would you have been?"