“I should like to, for I know we are not safe as long as we are in the river, but I am afraid to put any more canvas on her. Not being familiar with the channel I am going it blind, and I don’t want to knock a hole in her, or run her high and dry on a sand-bar before I know it. I think it would be safest to stay here for a while, and let our pursuers get ahead of us, so that we will be in their wake instead of having them in ours. Perhaps you had better talk it up among the boys and see what they think of it. While you are about it, find out if there is any one in the band who knows the river. If there is, send him to me.”
Jones hurried away to obey this order, and presently returned with a boy who lived in Oxford, and who had often piloted his father’s tugs up and down the river. The information he gave the captain was contained in a very few words, but it proved to be of great value to him. The boy told him that he had better keep as close to the bluff banks as he could, for there was where the channel was; but when he came to a place where the banks were low on both sides, he would find the deepest water pretty near the middle of the river.
“That’s all I want to know about that,” said Enoch. “It is eleven o’clock, isn’t it, and we are about thirty-five miles from Bridgeport? Very well. How much farther down the river ought the current and this wind to take us by daylight?”
“I should think it ought to take us past Mayville, and that is seventy miles from Bridgeport,” replied the boy.
“Do you know of any little creeks around there that we could hide in during the day?”
The boy said there were a dozen of them.
“All right,” answered Enoch. “Perhaps you had better stay on deck with me to-night, and to-morrow we will sleep. Now Jones, divide the crew into two equal watches, and send one of them below if they are sleepy and want to go. Then bring up a couple of lanterns and hang them to the catheads. If we don’t show lights we may get run over.”
Jones proved to be an invaluable assistant, and it is hard to tell how Enoch would have got on without him. He hung out the lamps, set the watch, and then he and some of the band went below to take a look at their floating home. He peeped into all the state-rooms, glanced at the forecastle, examined all the lockers as well as the galley and pantry, and was delighted with everything he saw.
“I didn’t know there was so much elbow-room on one of these little boats,” said he, after he had finished his investigations. “There are provisions enough in the store-rooms to last us a week, and the owner has left his trunk and his hunting and fishing traps on board.”
“That must not be touched,” said Enoch, decidedly.