However, there was no time for exchange of sympathy. Down with a rush came the wreckage—blankets and boxes and record-books and pieces of clothing, and even the iron instruments; for so heavy was the water and so rapid was the current that the instruments had not yet sunk.
“Quick!” bade Clément. “Vite! Arrêtez-les!”
And he began to wade and grasp. From across the stream the lieutenant and Mr. Preuss, encouraging by gestures, also were rescuing the property. With a plunge Oliver seized a long black box which he knew contained the telescope, but the current almost overthrew him, and it whisked the box from his fingers.
Only a few of the things could be stopped; at last the lieutenant, with a gesture in sign-language, said that he and Mr. Preuss would continue on down-river along their edge, which was the left bank of the river, and that the others should continue on down by their edge which was the right bank. But Basil Lajeunesse, the boat having been turned over again, boldly embarked, with a paddle, and took to the current.
“Hello,” remarked Joseph Descoteaux to Oliver, now that there was time for greeting. “You saw us, n’est-ce-pas? Ma foi, but I was drowned if Basil had not held tight.”
“That Basil, he is a water-rat; he is a beaver,” pronounced Honoré Ayot. “We nearly were wrecked above, too, when the boat stuck fast and the water flowed right over us. After that we would have driven the boat by a rope paid out from on shore; but Basil was jerked in like a fish, and all you could see was his head like head of swimming beaver, as he was carried on down. Before he had caught up with the boat he had swum a half a mile.”
“Yes, that is what he said when the lieutenant hauled him aboard. ‘Ugh!’ said Basil. ‘Je crois bien que j’ai nagé un demi mile—I verily believe that I have swum a half a mile!’”
They all continued along the water’s edge, in the canyon; clambering and wading and looking for articles from the wreck. A few record books were picked out; that was about the extent of the salvage. Across, the lieutenant and Mr. Preuss were likewise seeking.
“I’ll go back and climb out and make for camp, to tell ’em you’re coming,” proposed Oliver.
So he did. He found in camp his own squad, and Kit Carson’s squad, arrived ahead of him, they having seen nothing from the rim. Fires were built up, and more meat was cut, in readiness. Late in the afternoon Basil and Clément, Ayot and Descoteaux toiled in, afoot, over the pudding-stone ridge and down to the island. They had abandoned the boat at a narrow place where it would not pass through, and Benoit had left to join the lieutenant.