“‘Appear!’ Well, the stones broke two holes through the boat!” Will growled. “But where is Steve? haven’t you seen him?”
“Seen him? No, where can he be? How did he take it, anyway?”
“I think he was very much frightened, he looked so queer,” said Charles. “Oh, boys! where is he? Perhaps he was hurt!”
Then they flew to the bank. But the most searching glances failed to discover either the boat or Stephen.
“Steve! Steve!” they shouted, in convulsive grief.
“Oh, who saw him last?” Will asked. “Was he in the boat, or swimming?”
No one could answer the question, and the boys’ pale faces betrayed how their conscience was reproaching them.
In truth, Stephen’s broken arm, together with the shock of the explosion, had rendered him helpless, and he had been swept over the falls in the boat.
It would be dramatic to break off here, leaving the reader a prey to fruitless inquiries as to Stephen’s fate, drop down among the hungry-eyed little picnickers in the grove that bordered the river, and give a glowing description of what was going on. But as this story has very little to do with the picnic, and as most readers would a little rather hear about Stephen, I will deliberately transgress the laws of romance, and tell how it fared with him.