Square and Compasses by Oliver Optic

The Chesterfields were struggling with all their might at their oars. They appeared to have no idea of the speed of the Winooski, and evidently entertained the idea that they could run away from her when they exerted themselves to the utmost. But Wash Barker and Mad Twinker, the coxswains, had apparently learned one thing: and this was that their crews could not handle the boats so well in rough as in smooth water.

The cove where they had stolen the clothes of the Beech Hill boys was at the narrowest part of the lake, where it was not more than a mile wide. Even here they had kept under the lee of the shore, and had been in very little troubled water. Half a mile below the cove was Northwest Bay, where the lake is four miles wide. The Chesterfield Collegiate Institute was on the north shore of the bay, near the point where the lake begins to contract its width.