"You see, Thad," he explained, "it ain't goin' to be on the side that the waves beat against, and so my duds won't be apt to get very wet. The cutest pocket you ever saw; and looks like it might just have been made specially for a feller that wanted to take a tour of the lake with his private yacht Now, do I go, Thad? I'm ready, and only waitin' for orders."
"Then you might as well start, Davy; and if I was you I'd keep out of sight all I could. If they happened to spy you, and believed you were going for help, so that they might be captured before night came, it would go hard with you perhaps."
"I got your meaning, Thad," Davy replied, without showing the least concern, for he was a fearless chap; "which is, that they've got the boat, and could chase after me if they thought I was going to get 'em in a peck of trouble by flitting. Never you fear, I'll keep low down, and out of sight."
He thereupon proved how easy it would be to lie in a position where he could guide the floating log, and yet be out of sight from the side that was toward the island.
"Oh! this is the greatest thing that's come my way for a long time," he said, as he walked further away from the shore, the water getting deeper all the time until his body was very nearly all submerged; "and I'm ever so much obliged to you for giving me the chance, Thad. Don't bother a thing about me. If some big mud-turtle don't grab me by the toe, and pull me down, I'll come out swimmingly, see?"
Thad knew that he could depend on the Jones boy. When a fellow can even think to joke like that when facing danger of any sort, he certainly could not be feeling in a state of panic.
"Now the breeze strikes me, fellows, and I'm off. I'd like to give a whoop, I feel so great; but something tells me that would be wrong. So just consider that's what I'm doing inside, anyhow. Good-bye, boys, and I hope you pull through O. K."
Thad did not answer, for the simple reason that the log with its boyish freight was already so far away that he would have to raise his voice to make Davy hear; and such a thing would be foolish, when they wanted to keep as quiet as possible, so as not to attract attention.
Standing there, they watched the strange argosy floating away on the dancing waves. Davy was urging it from the shore of the island as well as he could by swimming, and without showing any part of his person.
"He's going to make that point, all right," said Thad, knowing that the Jones boy's one fear had been lest he ground on the bar that put out there, and be compelled to show himself in order to push off again.