We kept paddling along, with our eyes open sharp. It was worth while to keep your eyes open on the river because there was so much to see—birds, and thousands of turtles sleeping on stones and logs, and sometimes a muskrat. Besides, there were fish jumping every little while, and sounds back among the trees and underbrush that were made by little animals you looked for but couldn’t see most of the while. We did see a few squirrels, and once a little bit of a chipmunk. He just sat up on his haunches and looked at us, not scairt a bit till I yelled “Boo!” at him. Then you should have seen him flick away. My, but he was quick! One second he was there and the next he was gone.
I saw Mark take out his watch and look at it, and knew what it meant, all right. He was just seeing if his stomach told the truth about its being dinner-time.
“Well?” says I.
He twisted his big round head on his fat neck and grinned.
“N-not for a half an hour,” says he.
“I don’t remember saying another word. I was too hungry to do anything but think about eating, and I’ll bet Mark was hungrier than I was. When you’re nearly starved you don’t want to talk, you just want to eat, and every minute between you and food seems like it stretched from noon till midnight.
“Well, sir, I guess being so hungry made us a little careless. We were just coming to a sharp bend, and for the first time we forgot to slow up and look ahead. We just pelted along as though there wasn’t a thing in the world to be afraid of. I was looking off to the left when I heard Mark give a startled grunt and saw him dig his paddle into the water and push the nose of the canoe toward shore. I looked. There, up to their waists in the river, were Jiggins and Collins, working over their flatboat that had struck something and tipped over. I dug my paddle in, too.
“It was lucky for us they were busy and had their backs our way, for we weren’t more than fifty feet from them. The splash and rush of the current kept the sound of our paddles from them, and we managed to get to shore and hide just on our side of the point. We didn’t pull the canoe up; we lifted it. Lifting was quieter. Then we sat down, plump! It took the wind right out of our sails.”
“Whew,” I says, “but that was a narrow one!”
He just shook his head and panted. “It was hot, and we moved pretty sudden, I can tell you.”