“Well, garsh!” Swatty said, “we rowed up here, we ought to be good and able to row back where we come from.” So we swung the skiff around and rowed down-current. No good! We didn't move at all. Or we just moved a foot or two.
It wasn't like when you run up on a snag or a rock. It wasn't stiff like that. We floated all right but we couldn't go anywhere.
“Listen!” Swatty said.
Away off far we heard voices and splashing, sounding the way things sound when you hear them across water. Swatty shouted. “Hello!” he shouted, and his voice came back to him, “Lo-wo-wo!” in an echo, the way echoes do.
“All right!” he said. “Now we know where the Illinois hills are, anyway. That's the way they echo back at you, so they must be over there. And I bet those men splashing in the water are after buffalo with pitchforks. So that's where we want to row.” That was pretty fine, wasn't it, when we couldn't row at all? I told Swatty so. I said we'd better shout and have the men come and get us. Swatty said they'd just think it was kids shouting for fun; and I guess that's what they did think, for we shouted and shouted, and when we quit we could still hear the men laughing and talking and splashing. So then Swatty sat down and put his head in his hands and thought. When we looked up he said:
“Do you believe in haunts and things?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Do you?”
“I don't know, either,” Swatty said. “Maybe I do and maybe I don't, but I know one thing: I ain't going to believe in them until I have to. I ain't going to believe this boat is 'witched here until I know it ain't stuck here some other way. I'm going to find out.”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, if we're stuck we're stuck on something under the water and that's sure, and I'm going to skin off my clothes and find out.”