“Are you sure you can find the spot in the dark, Cal?” asked Larry, with some anxiety in his voice. “For it’ll be pitch dark before we get there.”
“Oh, yes, I can find it,” his brother answered.
“There’s a deep indentation in the coast there—an inlet, in fact, which runs several miles up through the woods. We’ll run in toward the shore presently and skirt along till we come to the mouth of the creek. I’ll find it easily enough.”
But in spite of his assurances, the boys, now severely suffering with thirst, had doubts, and to make sure, they approached the shore and insisted that Cal should place himself on the bow, where he could see the land as the boat skirted it.
This left three of them to handle four oars. One of them used a pair, in the stern rowlocks, where the width of the boat was not too great for sculls, while the other two plied each an oar amidships.
In their impatience, and tortured by thirst as they were, the three oarsmen put their backs into the rowing and maintained a stroke that sent the boat along at a greater speed than she had ever before made with the oars alone. Still it seemed to them that their progress was insufferably slow.
Presently Cal called to them: “Port—more to port—steady! there! we’re in the creek and have only to round one bend of it. Starboard! Steady! Way enough.”
A moment later the dory slid easily up a little sloping beach and rested there.
“Where’s your spring, Cal?” the whole company cried in chorus, leaping ashore.