“Then we could not walk to Boston from there?”
“No,” said Amos; “why should we walk? There’ll be a good breeze come sunset. All we need is a good drink of water, and there’s a water-jug in the cabin. I can take it ashore and fill it at some spring.”
As the children talked, the current had carried the boat steadily toward shore, but now it did not move.
“She’s stuck on a sand-bar,” exclaimed Amos, “and the tide’s turning. Perhaps I can walk ashore.”
It was not long before the boat began to tip to one side, and as the tide went out, they found themselves on a sand-bar, a full half mile from shore. The water seemed to flow in little channels, like wide brooks, here and there, between the boat and the land, and Amos wondered if he could either jump or wade those channels. The hot July sun beat down upon them, they were very thirsty and uncomfortable, and Amanda began to wish herself at home.
“We ought not to have started,” she said, ready to cry. “I know my mother won’t like it, and Mistress Stoddard will not like it, either.”
Anne was very quiet. She was thirsty, hot and uncomfortable, and being run aground on a sand-bar near a strange shore was a very different thing from her other prosperous voyage with Captain Enos. What if they should never reach Boston at all?
“They will all think that we have run away this time,” said Amos, who had stepped over the side of the boat onto the sand-bar.
“Oh, no, they won’t,” said Anne. “I wrote on a smooth chip, ‘Amanda and Amos and I have gone to Boston to find my father,’ and put it on the kitchen table.”
“I believe I could get across those channels some way,” declared Amos, “and I am so thirsty that I’m going to try it.”