SAMMY GRUNTED WHEN HE GOT THE FULL WEIGHT OF IT
His eyes lighted on them right off, and he let a holler out of him that ’most split their ears, and stood there shaking his fist and dancing up and down like he was on the end of a rubber. Mark wasn’t worried much about him because he knew he wouldn’t dare do anything, but he was worried about the racket, for it was sure to bring Batten and Bill down onto him. He couldn’t do a thing, though, but urged Sammy to hurry, which Sammy did the best he could. It was mighty slow going and seemed a lot slower than it was.
Old Willis followed as close behind as he dared, yelling all the time at the top of his voice; but they got to the top of the bank, and in a couple of minutes they were in the boat and all right. But Mark looked down the road and saw Batten and Bill coming pell-mell, looking as though they meant business. This time neither of the men that had been chasing me bothered about yelling. There was more important business now than catching a kid that had been playing a joke on them, so they saved their breath and put all their attention to getting where they wanted to be as soon as they could.
Sammy started down the steps, and like to have broken his neck, but he managed to keep his feet and make the boat. It is a pretty hard thing to get a heavy machine down easy, and Sammy wasn’t used to handling heavy things very much. When he went to lower the turbine it slipped out of his hands and went whang onto the bottom of the boat. They didn’t have time to see if any damage was done, though they did hear a board split, but just dug in their oars and started out through the cut. Mark had time and presence of mind to grab one oar out of Willis’s boat so they couldn’t make very good time chasing them, and off they went.
They weren’t more than half-way out of the cut before Batten and Bill were at the foot of the steps bellowing and threatening. Mark said it made him grin to see how mad they were, and how helpless. And right then Mark and Sammy heard me a-yelling to the top of my voice and saw me come plunging into the marsh like I was a regular frog. Batten and Bill tried that, too, but right where they were was a bad hole, and it was so mushy and wet they sank in to their hips and had to go back. I had better luck, like I told you. Then Batten ran off up the steps, and we didn’t see him for quite a while, but it turned out he’d gone after another oar.
Sammy had the oars, of course, and he rowed like all get out. We went pretty fast, and the current helped us, but we hadn’t got more than what you might call a healthy lead before the nose of Willis’s boat came poking out of the cut, and in another minute it was skimming down-stream as fast as Bill could shove it.
When we were almost to the island I felt my feet getting wet, and when I got to investigating I found that there was an inch of water in the boat. When Sammy dropped the turbine it had knocked a hole in her bottom, and she was filling as quickly as a boat could be reasonably expected to, and there we were in a pretty bad pickle. Mark saw it the same time I did.
“Boat’s s-s-sinkin’, Sammy!” he stuttered. “What we goin’ to do?”
Sammy kept right on rowing as fast as he could, and said never a word. “Looks like he’s tryin’ to think,” says Mark, and I guess thinking was more hard work for Sammy than carrying the turbine. But he did it all right—got an idea, and it tickled him so he grinned the widest grin I ever saw on his face.