“Hooray!” shouted the carpenter. “Why he’s got ashore yonder.”
“Where did the hail come from, Nat?” said my uncle, with a sigh of relief.
“Seemed to be from among the trees a hundred yards forward there to the left.”
“Run her close in, then, and hail, my lad,” he cried.
He had hardly spoken before the wind failed again, and they bent to their oars.
“Where are you, Pete?” I shouted.
“Here, among the trees,” came back, and I steered the boat in the direction, eagerly searching the great green wall of verdure, but seeing nothing save a bird or two.
“Are you ashore?” I shouted.
“Nay! It’s all water underneath me. Come on, sir. Here I am.”
A few more strokes of the oars ran us close in beneath the pendent boughs, and the next minute the carpenter caught hold of one of the overhanging branches and kept the boat there, while Pete descended from where he had climbed, to lower himself into the boat and sit down shivering and dripping.