"That's a very good idea of yours," Fuzz cried at once; "let's look for a nice piece of bark, and then we will put it in the stream and float on it."
Buzz was just a little bit frightened when she found what Fuzz was going to do, and she said she was sure they would be drowned; but Fuzz told her not to be silly, and said that as long as he was with her no harm should come to her. Then he set to work to look for a piece of bark which should do for a raft. He soon found one, and, helped by Buzz, he pulled it to the edge of the water and let it fall into the stream. Then before it had time to float away he took hold of one of Buzz's little front paws, and together they jumped on to their raft.
"Oh, oh!" squeaked Buzz in a great fright, for their weight had made the wood sink about a quarter of an inch below the water, and that was quite enough to wet their little feet, and their legs too. And the water was so cold! But in a minute their raft came up again, the water ran off it, and it floated merrily away down the stream. Buzz was then no longer afraid of being drowned; and after they had dried their paws and curled their tails round them to keep them warm, she said that it was much nicer to sail down the stream than to walk along its banks. And Fuzz said the same.
CHAPTER II
THE WATER-RAT PLAYS HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH THE OWL
THE raft was quite big enough for them to sit side by side, but of course there was not very much room for them to move about. They were quite content, however, to sit quite still, and to watch the banks slipping past them.
Several times they had narrow escapes from being drowned, for as they had no means of guiding their little raft they had to go wherever the stream took them, and once it bumped them right up against a big stone that rose out of the water. This made the raft tilt to one side so much, that if Fuzz and Buzz had not held tightly to one another they would have slid off into the water. But before either of them had time to feel frightened, they were carried safely past the big stone and were floating down the stream again.
As the morning went on, Fuzz and Buzz began to get very hungry. So when the raft floated to one side of the stream and got caught by some tall reeds which grew at the edge, Fuzz and Buzz made up their minds to land, and go into the wood and see if they could find something to eat.