“Get ashore!” exclaimed Bob. “They’ll catch us here.”
“Back into the cabin, till we see who they are!” Joe ejaculated.
They stood still, amid these contradictory orders, undecided. The paddles sounded closer, around a bend of the channel. Joe dragged his cousin back inside the cabin door. He had a sudden impulse to rush ashore after all. Then Sam, almost gray with fright, rushed at the mooring-rope and began to saw at it with his knife.
“Hold on, Sam! Stop that!” Joe hissed at him, but the negro had severed the strands. The last of them parted with a jerk, and the released houseboat instantly swung out. The gangplanks splashed into the water. Without any control, the boat reeled across the bayou, half grounded, swung off again and smashed through the curtain of vines that had shielded her anchorage. There was a ripping and crushing of twigs and leaves, and then the branches closed in behind them. They were through and out of sight of pursuit.
CHAPTER X
DOWN THE RIVER
“Dodged ’em!” exclaimed Bob.
They could still hear the dipping paddles, and a faint mutter of voices. In another minute the new-comers would perceive that the big boat was gone. But for the present the boys were screened from sight, and a stretch of fairly open water lay ahead. Joe stepped cautiously out of the cabin and seized the great steering-oar, trying to hold the houseboat straight down the channel. But she was clumsy to handle. She banged against a tree-trunk, struck a snag with a terrific jar, and then drifted sidewise around a bend. Bob came to help at the helm, but their united efforts were incapable of holding the boat straight.
“You-all better git your guns ready,” Sam advised. “Dem fellers goin’ find out de boat’s gone, an’ be after us mighty sharp.”
Joe was extremely angry at Sam’s rash act in cutting the boat loose. The heavy craft could never keep ahead of paddles, and at any moment the channel might end in a log-jam or a lagoon. And, to intensify his fears, there was a sudden shout of surprise and anger from behind. The thieves had discovered the loss of the houseboat.
“If you hadn’t been such a fool we wouldn’t be in this scrape!” Joe exclaimed. “Now I think we’d better turn this boat loose and take to the woods.”