CHAPTER XVII.—CAPTAIN JOE TO THE RESCUE.
Clay went to his bunk early, but could not sleep. The events of the day had been exciting, and the danger was not yet past. Besides, his bed sloped with the body of the boat, and he had a sense of trying to sleep standing up. He could hear Alex tumbling about in his bunk, censuring Captain Joe, who seemed to be going through some kind of a performance for the exclusive benefit of Teddy, the bear cub.
Case was moving about on deck, and Clay smiled as he imagined him clinging to the railing to keep his footing on the tilting planks. The prow lamp was out, and there were no lights in the cabin. There were stars early in the evening, but clouds came up after a time, and it was dark as a chamber in the Mammoth Cave before ten o’clock.
Presently it began to rain. The water fell in great sheets, and the wind, rising steadily, drove it into every crevice in the light sheathing of the cabin. The drops drummed on the deck like hailstones.
Clay heard Case enter the cabin to prevent getting soaked, and heard him talking to Teddy, whom he seemed to have taken into his arms. Then the tired boy dropped off into sleep.
When he awoke Case was shaking him by the shoulder, and the boat was rocking and bobbing up and down, as if in the water the whole length, and not half in, as it had been when he went to sleep. He sat up on the side of his bunk and saw that every light on the boat was burning.
“Why don’t you switch off the lights and let me sleep?” he asked.
“Hear it rain!” Case advised. “And feel the Rambler nodding to the rising water! Do you know where we can find that extra anchor?”
“It ought to be in there where the wheels were,” Clay replied, getting out on the floor and stumbling over Teddy, who at once retaliated by biting and clawing at his bare legs. Case drew the cub away by the tail.
“You’ll get put on the dunce block, Mr. Teddy,” he said, “if you don’t cultivate better manners You’re always under foot, like a pet pig on a ranch. No,” he went on, addressing Clay, “I’ve looked in the prow hold, and everywhere else I could think of, and the extra anchor is not in view. I wish I had by the neck the rascal who cut away the one we were using.”
“Why do you want the anchor?” demanded Clay. “Do you think the boat will float straight up in the rain? We can find the mud hook in the morning.”
“Use one of your own jokes to weigh the Rambler down,” advised Alex tucked up in his bunk. “They’re heavy enough to weigh an ocean steamer down.”
Case removed Alex from his bunk, all bundled up in blankets, and rolled him about on the floor, not as a punishment for a too personal suggestion, he explained, but for the good of his digestion. Teddy assisted in the manipulation of the lad, and Captain Joe actually laughed.
“When you’ve finished with that monkeyshining,” Clay said, “perhaps you’ll tell me why you want the anchor.”
“Just you go out and look,” was all the answer Case made.
Clay did not go out and look, for it was raining steadily, and he would have been wet to the skin in a minute, but he went to the door and looked out. The little valley of the rivulet was a brimming ocean of angry water, and the natural levee which separated it from the Columbia was out of sight. In fact, there was a current running over it!
The Rambler, weighed down to some extent by the iron wheels which had been put on the afternoon before for the purpose of running her over the shore to the smooth water below the rapids, was still in what had been the sheltered pool, but the boat had floated, and the wheels were fast against the levee.
Whenever the water should lift the boat so that the wheels would clear the levee, then the Rambler would drift out into the raging stream, and the experience of the previous night would be re-enacted, with a different result in prospect. It was another trying situation.
“How in the dickens did this valley get so full of water, all at once?” he asked, turning back to the cabin. “This is serious!”
“There must have been a cloudburst on the mountain,” Alex suggested, arising and looking out at the yellow sweep of water, now far above the spot on the bank where the cooking fire had been built “Looks like another flood.”
“There is no soil here to catch and hold the downpour,” Case explained, “and this valley drains a lot of country, which seems to be mostly standing on end. The result is that a heavy rain here will send a lot of water into this depression, and there you are!”
“And it will send the Rambler over the rapids!” Alex exclaimed, “if we sit around here and wait for it to raise a few feet more.”
“I don’t know what we can do, I’m sure,” Case said, dejectedly.
“Perhaps the river will rise so we can shoot the rapids,” Alex suggested. “That would be easier than rolling the boat around. I don’t feel no nourishment in treating a boat like a wheelbarrow.”
“Do you think we might do that?” asked Case, turning to Clay.
“We can tell by looking,” was the reply. “This whole valley is a larger repetition of the little one the rivulet fills to the brim every time it rains. For a hundred miles, here, the valley of the Columbia is narrow, with mountains on either side. The rain, comes off the slopes in sheets, and there is no reason why the Columbia should not rise six or eight feet during a storm like this.”
“If it does, shall we risk it?” asked Case.
“I vote for risking it!” Alex shouted. “What’s the use of going for a boat ride and then trundling the old thing along on wheels?”
“Well,” Clay said, to change the subject, “all we can do now is to get out a long, strong rope and tie up to one of the cedar trees. Who’ll swim out with it? It will be like taking a morning bath!”
“I will!” Alex replied. “I want a good swim, anyway. I’ll put on an old suit, so I won’t get scratched if I go to the bottom over a nest of briars, and carry the rope to that big tree near where we built the cooking fire. The rope will hold the Rambler all right, will it?”
“It certainly will,” Clay responded. “There is nothing to fear from the rope, but you must be careful and not get into the current that is sweeping out into the river. No one could swim against that.”
“I’ll be careful, all right!” grinned the boy. “I don’t want to do any long-diving stunts here. If I should go under out there I might not come up until I reached the ocean, which would be too long without food.”
The boy put on an old suit which water and mud would not injure and, taking a light cord, fastened it about his neck and leaped into the swift-running water. He had little difficulty in swimming straight to the tree and, drawing the rope to him by means of the cord, secured the boat to the great cedar by the heavy cable. Then he turned back.
The lights from the boat lighted up the pool, or what had been the pool, and Case and Clay could see the boy sporting about in the water, now trying to mount a log which the current was carrying down, now dodging out of the way of a mass of boughs which obstructed his passage.
“There’s something floating down that looks like a paper!” he finally cried, “and I’m going to get it. Just watch me, will you?”
He struck out into the swift drive of the rivulet and swam boldly for a few strokes, missing the paper at first, but finally overtaking it. When he turned back the boys could see that he was in distress. He was swimming with all his strength, but he was being carried out. The sweep of the tide was too strong for him.
“That’s a fine thing!” Case shouted. “Turn in, kid! Turn in to the bank! Don’t try to swim against the current. Turn in!”
Alex did turn toward the bank, but the water swept him on, and he passed the Rambler with a white face showing under the lights.
“What can we do?” asked Clay, half crazy at the situation. “We can’t do a thing! The ropes are all attached to the tree. Alex,” he called, “try to turn toward the shore! You can’t swim against the whole river! Face the other way, down stream, and point for the shore!”
There was now a roaring in the boy’s ears, and the water seemed a desirable place to rest! After he had lain inactive a moment he would have the strength to swim out! Many a tired swimmer has been deceived by the same ideas that came to Alex—and never came out again except by the aid of human hands!
The despairing boy saw the cascade just ahead and knew that, once over the falls made by the natural levee, he would be in the open river and beyond assistance. Still he swam, desperately, putting out his last ounce of strength. The lights from the boat did not shine brightly where he now was, and the turbulent river beyond looked dark and cold.
Then a white body struck against his back, there was a pull at his neck, and he knew that, slowly, surely, he was winning against the current. He realized that Captain Joe was holding him by the shoulder and, while half supporting him, swimming for dear life!
The boys on the Rambler watched the struggle helplessly. Captain Joe was doing more than either of them could have done. Now the swimmers gained a trifle, now they were swept nearer to where the flood tumbled over the levee. Captain Joe naturally drew toward the shore, and this at last brought them to safety.
After a long pull they came to a portion of the levee where heavy shrubs still resisted the rush of the water, and Alex grasped them and, after breathing for a minute, worked his way to the shore, Captain Joe still clinging to him, for the dog was well-nigh exhausted. Clay and Case set up great shouts when the two started up the bank of the swollen pool.
They would still have to swim to gain the Rambler, but this was not at all risky, as there was little current between the bank and the boat. Indeed, if Alex had kept to this part of the expanse of water instead of swimming out into the current after the paper, he would have had no trouble in returning, and Captain Joe would have had no opportunity to show both his loyalty and his intelligence.
When the two clambered up on the deck of the Rambler they met with a reception which disclosed the affection that existed between the boys. They shook Alex by the hands, and the shoulders, and called him “a great dunce” for swimming out into the current, and then shook hands all over with him again! And Captain Joe was petted and fondled to his heart’s content. Even Teddy, the bear, threw his short arms about the neck of the big white bulldog and gave him a hug!
“Don’t you ever think he doesn’t know all about it!” Clay explained. “Teddy was just as anxious as any of us, and I thought I heard him scolding when you struck out into the middle of the flood. Captain Joe was positively disgusted then!”
“Was it hard to get him into the water?” asked Alex.
“Hard to get him into the water!” cried Case. “Why, he was in before we knew anything about his intentions. That is some dog!”
Rain was still falling, and the boys decided to build a great fire in the coal heater and sit by it until morning. Should the river continue to rise, they thought, they would make the attempt to ran the rapids.
“The high point won’t come until this water has had time to get into the river and swell it opposite this point,” Clay explained, “but we may as well sit up as to go to bed and lie awake thinking what a confounded numskull Alex is. Still,” he added, “we should have missed the little rascal. I’m strong for a medal for Captain Joe!”
It rained steadily all night, and when daylight came it was only a blur, for the clouds were heavy and low, and the rain seemed to fill all space. The river was up to the top of the levee, and the Rambler was pulling at the cable fastened to the cedar. The valley, so far as they could see, was a moving flood of yellowish water.
“If this keeps up until noon,” Clay said, “I’ll be inclined to take a jump at the rapids. What do you say, lads? Of course we’d have to take the wheels.
“I’m for it!” cried Alex and Case, in a breath. “Lead us to it!”