He wasn't on the shore. He—but that's what Swatty is like. He was in a skiff, rowing as hard as he could toward the ice!
Bony and me had run across the First Slough without thinking of anything but hurrying up, but Swatty, when he came to the Slough, thought, “Well, if anybody has a boat around here they would haul it into the Slough where the river ice wouldn't sweep it away or crush it.” So he just took a look, and there was a skiff. It was hauled up under a tree and padlocked to the tree. It looked as if it was there for good and all, but when Swatty looked at the boat the chain was just stapled into the boat and all he did was pry out the staple with a piece of driftwood. There were no oarlocks, but you can make a thole pin with a piece of wood, and that was what Swatty did. He made thole pins with pieces of driftwood and he pried the skiff down to the ice and slid it to the river, and then he jumped in and began rowing with two pieces of driftwood for oars.
I shouted to Bony and he stopped, and we turned back and ran. Swatty was n't trying to keep up with the ice, he was trying to get to it any way he could, and he was having a pretty hard time of it. First one thole pin broke and then the other and he had to paddle. I thought he'd never reach the ice.
Even Bony stopped crying.
Well, Swatty got to the ice, but he couldn't land on it. He just sort of hugged it with the boat, and Bony and me had to run again to keep even with him. Then Bony's father came to the edge of the ice and tried it carefully with his foot, but it was firm because all the weak ice had been scraped off at the bend. So all he did was to get into the boat. It was easy. Then he took one of the pieces of driftwood and helped Swatty paddle.
So then everything was all right and Bony's father wasn't drowned or hadn't shot himself or anything, so Bony began to cry again.
It took us a long time to get the boat back where it belonged and a longer time to walk back to opposite the town. It was dark when we got there and the ice was still going by, and we knew it might be a week before we could get across the river again; but all at once we heard a rifle or a shotgun across the river, and then Bony's father fired his, and that let them know he was all right. So then we all worked and built a big driftwood fire and when it was burning we walked in front of it—one, two, three, four, and then back again: one, two, three, four. We hoped they could see there were four of us and that we were all right.