“What, Swatty?” I asked.
“Say!” he said; “we're floating away from that mush-rat house and it ain't floating with us. I never heard of a mush-rat house out in the middle of a lake, with a current floating by, that didn't float with the current!”
“Are you scared, Swatty?” I asked, for if he was scared I didn't know what I would be.
“No, I ain't scared,” he said, “but it ain't right. It ain't possible, that's all! I bet this is a haunted lake. I bet there is a haunted house around here, or an ol' witch, or something.”
“Come on, let's get out of it, then. Let's row!”
I said.
“You bet I'll row!” Swatty said, and we did. We steered off to one side of the mush-rat's house and rowed hard. We had a good double-ender skiff, rounded bottom and not flat bottom, and we made her hump! All of a sudden Swatty's left oar came out of the oarlock and he nearly fell backwards into the bottom of the boat. He got up and slapped the oar back into the oarlock and we both rowed hard.
“We ain't moving!”
Bony said that. He was hanging onto the sides of the skiff with both hands, looking scared and white, and you never heard anybody say anything the way he said that! It was like he had seen a ghost. Me and Swatty stopped rowing and looked. About twenty feet away from us was that old mush-rat house and we could see a little ripple of water on the upper side of it but it wasn't moving and we weren't floating away from it. There was the same kind of ripple against the bow of our boat.
We rowed again and we rowed hard and the skiff didn't move! There we were, out in the middle of that haunted lake, or whatever it was, and no bottom that you could reach with an oar, and we couldn't row up-stream and we didn't float downstream. And over yonder was a mush-rat's house just like we were. It sure looked like we were in a haunted lake and I didn't blame Bony for being scared and crying. I was scared myself. It looked like we were in a haunted lake we could not row out of and that we might have to stay there forever.