“And mine?” exclaimed his companion. “Boy, have you got ’em?”
“I ain’t got nothin’,” answered Jake. “Didn’t you hold fast to ’em when the boat capsized? Then they went to the bottom of the lake, most likely, an’ you won’t never see ’em agin, ’cause the water’s more’n four hundred feet deep right here, an’ the mud goes down a hundred feet furder.”
I had floated off the sawyer the instant I was relieved of the weight of my three passengers, and the current, which at this point set pretty strongly toward the outlet, carried me within reach of Jake Coyle’s arm. As he spoke, he gave me a sly but vigorous push, which sent me out of sight of the two men who were clinging to the sawyer, but not so far away but that I could hear every word they said. When they found that their valises had gone to the bottom, their fear gave place to rage, and they fell to abusing Jake and each other.
“I knew we would come to grief if we got into that canoe, but you insisted on it, and now you see what we have made by it,” said one of the men after he had sworn himself out of breath. “How are we going to get to Canada when we haven’t got five dollars between us? We’ve put ourselves in a fair way of going to prison, and we haven’t a thing to show for it.”
“Hold your tongue!” exclaimed the other, fiercely. “Do you want to give yourself away to this boy? Say, Tommy, or Julius, or whatever your name is, are you good at diving?”
“Never could dive wuth a cent,” declared Jake, who often boasted that he could bring up bottom at a greater depth than any other boy in the State. “What do you reckon you want me to do—try to get them grip-sacks fur you? There ain’t a livin’ man can go down to the bottom of the mud where them things is by this time. Was there much into ’em?”
“Was there? Well, I should—”
“Hold on!” interrupted Jim. “We’ll not give the money up until we have made an effort to recover it. We’ll keep this boy with us until morning, and then we’ll fix up some sort of a drag and see what we can do with it. I don’t believe that the water is as deep—Here, you villain, what sort of a game have you been playing on us? The water isn’t over five feet deep. I’m standing on bottom now.”
“Wal, stand there long’s you like,” replied Jake, who all this while had been holding fast to another snag a little distance away. “I won’t charge you no rent fur it. You stole that there money somewheres, an’ I know right where the constable lives. ’Twon’t take me long—”
A vivid light shot out into the darkness, a water-proof cartridge cracked spitefully, and a bullet from Jim’s revolver whistled dangerously near to Jake Coyle’s head.