“Hadn’t you better let her go down a bit, sir?” said the carpenter. “He may be drifting, and will come up lower.”
“But the lad could swim,” said my uncle, as I began to feel a horrible chill which made my hands grow clammy.
“Swim? Yes, sir—like a seal. I’m getting skeart. One of they great lizardy things must have got him.”
“Cease rowing!” cried my uncle, and he followed my example of standing up in the boat and scanning the surface, including the nearest shore—that on our left, where the trees came right down to the water.
They stopped together, and let the boat drift slowly with the current downward and backward, till all at once there was a light puff of hot wind which filled the sail, and we mastered the current, once more gliding slowly up stream, with the water pattering against the sides and bows.
But there was no sign of Pete, and having failed to take any bearings, or to remember by marks on the shore whereabouts he had gone down, we were quite at fault, so that when the wind failed again and the boat drifted back, it was impossible to say where we had seen the last of the poor lad.
I felt choking. Something seemed to rise in my throat, and I could only sit there dumb and motionless, till all at once, as the wind sprang up again, filled the sail, and the boat heeled over, the necessity of doing something to steer her and keep her in the right direction sent a thrill through me, and I did what I ought to have done before.
For, as the water rattled again under the bows and we glided on, I shouted aloud—
“Pete, lad, where are you?”
“Ahoy!” came from a distance higher up, farther than we could have deemed possible after so much sailing.