“Now Joe!” exclaimed Roy, reproachfully.
“I didn’t mean that. Of course I know that you can be depended on,” said Joe, hastily. “Let’s take after him. If we find that we can’t take the canoe away from him, we’ll sink her. Matt Coyle shan’t have her any longer.”
The three oars fell into the water simultaneously, and the skiff shot silently up the creek in pursuit of the canoe, whose occupant was making his double paddle whirl through the air like the shafts of a windmill. An oar rattled behind him and aroused him from his reverie. He faced about to see the skiff close upon him. The night had grown so dark that he could not tell who the crew were, but he knew that they would not come at him in that fashion unless they had some object in view. Matt and his boys always had the fear of the law before their eyes, and Jake, believing that a constable or deputy sheriff was in pursuit of him, turned about and churned the water into foam in his desperate attempt to outrun the skiff. He succeeded in getting a good deal of speed out of his clumsy craft, but fast as he went the pursuers gained at every stroke.
“Hold on with that boat!” shouted Arthur. “We’ve got you and you might as well give in.”
But Jake wasn’t that sort. He redoubled his exertions with the paddle, but all of a sudden his progress was stopped so quickly that Jake left his seat and pitched headlong into the bow of the canoe. Speaking in western parlance he had “picked up a snag” whose sharp, gnarled end penetrated the canvas covering of the canoe, tearing a hole in it that was as big as Jake’s head. It did not hang there but floated off with the current, and began filling rapidly. In a few seconds she was out of sight, and Jake was making all haste to reach the shore. A moment later the skiff dashed up, and Roy Sheldon struck a vicious blow at the swimmer with his oar; but he was just out of reach. A few long strokes brought him to shallow water, two jumps took him to dry land, and in an instant more he was out of sight in the bushes.
“What tumbled him out so suddenly?” exclaimed Joe.
“Look out, boys! There’s a snag right under us,” said Roy.
“Where in the world is the boat?” inquired Arthur.
“There she is,” answered Joe, pointing to a swirl in the water which marked the spot where the canvas canoe was quietly settling down on the bottom of the creek.
“Sunk!” cried Roy. “So she is. She must have a cargo of some sort aboard, or she would not have gone down like that. Now, what’s to be done?”