If Steve had looked narrowly, however, he would certainly have seen the cord coming out of the water in front of Bob; for, if a boy can see the string leading to his new kite when his mischievous brother is flying it nearly a quarter of a mile away,—mark this, we do not say that any one else could see it,—then surely, in spite of the distance between him and Bob, he could have seen what little of the cord there was in sight.
But Steve’s attention was centred upon the raft, where his dog was.
Let not the peruser of this work of fiction suppose that the raft was really one thousand feet below Bob. By no means; sundry loose knots, kinks, or snarls, shortened the distance greatly.
But it was undoubtedly a long way below him.
“Hollo, Stepping Hen!” Bob yelled. “Don’t you see that your raft and the dog are sailing towards the falls? Why don’t you stir around and save ’em?”
Stephen heard him distinctly, and it seemed to him that Carlo’s doom was sealed. He was now running madly up and down the margin of the river, in the vain hope of finding some craft on which he might set out in pursuit. But he could find nothing that would serve his turn.
Bob saw the boy’s dilemma, and like all orthodox villains, when successful in their wickedness, he could not conceal his delight. His powerful imagination saw a log in each broken twig, a huge boulder in each little stone, a frightful chasm in each slight depression in the ground; and he passed along by leaps that bore considerable resemblance to those of an Alpine hunter. He writhed his whole body, distorted his features, rolled his intensely blue eyes, hallooed, sang and uttered original and untranslatable interjections, expressive of triumph.
Such actions could not but be injurious to his system; but—fortunately for himself and the rest of the world,—as Bob afterwards invented and patented an ingenious saw-horse—they were to be of short continuance.