Happily his teeth were strong and sharp—teeth which many an older person would have envied. He was plucky and persevering also, and he set to work with a will to gnaw, or unfasten, or "worry" open the tough knots which bound him.
It was a stiff job, and a tiring one too. But he kept on pluckily, and would not give up. The sun sank lower in the heavens, and the beautiful summer afternoon wore on. "Oh! how they will wonder what has become of me at home!" he sighed. "I must be quick," and he redoubled his efforts.
But he found the task too difficult. The rope was hard and tough, and time was fast passing. His teeth and jaws quite ached with the unwonted use to which he was putting them. So after thinking over another plan he changed his tactics entirely.
Though his wrists were tied, his fingers were comparatively free; he could, for instance, grasp firmly with them anything that was not very large. He had noticed that the end of the rope tethering the boat had been tied to the bough of a young willow near the water's edge. He resolved to break that bough, and then slowly work the boat along by pulling at the grass, reeds, or anything on the bank. In a short time he carried out the first part of his programme.
Compared with gnawing at the hard rope, the twisting of the supple bough backwards and forwards, until he wrested it from the parent stem, was but a light task. It was more difficult to work the boat along against the stream. Yet by patience and pluck and perseverance—the three "p's" that all young folks should seek to acquire—he managed to succeed.
"Should that man come back to trouble me," he said, "he will find me gone; that will be something. Still I do not quite see how I am to get the things for the house, tied as I am to this boat."
Pluckily he pulled at the grass and reeds, and worked the boat along. When he had gone some distance from the point where the man had fastened the boat, he shouted again, and he continued to shout at intervals. But no cry answered his own. There was no sound but the lapping of the water against the boat or the murmur of the wind.
So some time passed. Alfy was getting very weary and hungry. There seemed no chance of help coming to him, and the situation was the more vexing, as he felt that his knife in his pocket, if he could but have got it, would soon have made short work of the knots. But in the circumstances the knife might have been left at the house, for all the good it was to him.
At length he came to the place where the flood poured into the river. "Hurrah!" he cried, "this does look like making progress. Now I will try and get as near as I can to the house."
It was at times more difficult to make progress on the flood than on the stream, for there was no decided bank such as edged the river; but he took advantage where he could of anything on the brink of the water, such as a hurdle or a bush, a stile or a hedge, and pluckily kept at his work.