This drag was made fast to a strong rope, forty feet in length, and was to be used in recovering the gun the professor had lost in the river just a week before.
The boys could not have wished for better luck than they had that day. They shot several ducks on their way down the river, and when they arrived off the head of Squaw Island, and had made up their minds where it was that the professor's boat had been capsized, Sam, who sat in the stern, threw the drag overboard, while Oscar pulled the skiff about in circles.
The water was only about twenty feet deep—the boys wished the weather was warmer, so that they could dive for the lost fowling-piece—and the bottom was composed of smooth, flat rocks, over which the sharp teeth of the drag passed almost as easily as they would have passed over a floor.
Of course they would catch hold of something occasionally, and stop the progress of the boat, and then Sam would overhaul the rope very carefully, only to find, when the drag came to the surface, that there was nothing on it.
At the third cast, however, his efforts were rewarded. The drag struck against some object that offered but a very feeble resistance as Sam tugged at the rope. He hauled in slowly and cautiously, and in a few seconds brought to light the missing gun, suspended by its trigger-guard from one of the teeth of the drag.
Sam greeted it with a series of frightful yells, flourishing it in triumph over his head, then rubbed it briskly with an oiled rag, which he drew from his game-bag, all the while making running comments upon the general appearance of the weapon, and finally he passed it over to his companion.
"Isn't it a beauty?" cried Oscar, holding it off at arm's length and giving it a good looking over. "If it shoots as well as it looks, it is certainly a valuable gun. We have saved somebody a hundred and fifty dollars."
"Yes, and more," remarked Sam. "It was made by Joe Manton, the fashionable gun-maker of England—you can see his name on the barrels—and never cost a cent less than three hundred."
When Oscar had admired the gun to his heart's content, he picked up the oars again, and pulled toward the island.