“I reckon so,” Joe murmured. “My hair almost turned gray for a minute. Luckily we put out those fires.”
“Yes-suh, Mr. Joe,” said Sam hoarsely. “But don’t you reckon dey’ll see right quick that we’ve done took de rosin an’ busted de cabin an’ moved de bees—an’ dey’ll be right after us?”
“They can’t see anything to-night,” returned Joe. “Likely they’ll sleep late to-morrow, and by noon we ought to be nearly at the end of our journey.”
“Besides, they’ll think we’ve gone by the steamboat,” said Bob, “and no use chasing us. They’ll never dream of a raft. I don’t believe they’ll give us any more trouble at all.”
They all tried to adopt this optimistic view. The raft was well out in the big river now, drifting at fair speed but proving quite unsteerable. The water was too deep to reach the bottom with the poles, and it was impossible to see anything ahead through the haze, so the boys were compelled to sit still upon the bee-hives, letting the raft drift, and trusting to blind luck to keep clear of sand-bars.
But the night was drawing to an end. Presently the fog paled and then reddened over in the east, and began to disperse. As the sun came up the drifting clouds split and melted; the boys saw themselves at last in the wide, yellow river, nearly in mid-channel, with low banks of intensely green swamp on both sides. The river was several hundred yards wide at this point, running fast with great surging eddies.
They were delighted to see how well the raft that they had built carried the weight of the hives. The flooring was dry; the hives stood a good four inches above the water. The framework seemed to hold together rigidly and strongly. Hardly a bee was in sight, though all the entrances were wide open. They had all crept inside, discomforted by the damp and by the steady swaying motion.
“How about breakfast?” Joe suggested.
“Just the thing,” said Bob. “I brought some of the stolen grub from the cabin. But we’ll have to eat raw ham, I guess, for we can’t build a fire here.”
“Why not?” Joe laughed, and he got into the small boat, rowed himself ashore, and overtook the raft with a bushel of sand and gravel and mud. With these materials they made a fireplace on the planking of the raft and ventured to kindle enough of a blaze to boil coffee and fry ham, putting it out immediately afterward, though Joe said that the timber rafts carry fires burning continually on a mud bed.