"Come, Dave, give us your hand!" and from that time forth they were the best of friends.
"He's dif'rent from the rest on us—that's sartin—but he's a good un, got a mighty sight o'pluck," said the whole crew.
CHAPTER V.
Narrow Escape from Drowning.—Return Home.—Severe Illness.—James determines to fit Himself for a Teacher.—Geauga Seminary.—Personal Appearance.—Dr Robinson's Verdict.
One dark, stormy night, just as the "Evening Star" was leaving a long reach of slack water, James was called out of his berth to tend the bow-line. As he began to uncoil the rope, it caught on the edge of the deck; he pulled several times before he could extricate it, but suddenly it gave way with such force as to throw him headlong into the water.
The whole crew were soundly sleeping, the boat glided over him, and as he could not swim he felt there was no hope. Suddenly he caught hold of something hard; it was the rope which had become entangled in a crevice of the deck and become so tight that it was an easy matter to climb up by it into the boat.
As he stood there in his dripping clothes, rescued from a watery grave, he took the rope and tried to see how it happened to catch in the crevice. Six hundred times he threw it, but it would not kink in the same manner again.
"No one but God could have saved my life by such a thread as that!" he exclaimed, and then he began to wonder if he could not make a better use of his miraculously-spared life than by spending it upon a canal-boat.