“What do you do next?” asked Clay, standing in the door of the cabin.
“After it rises,” Case answered, not a little proudly, “you mix it up good and hard and put it to bake. We ought to have bread enough out of that batch to last us a week. I can bake only two loaves at a time under the pail, but time doesn’t count for anything with us, and the dough will keep.”
The rain had stopped, and the boy went out on deck to see how Alex was succeeding in his quest for a fish supper. Conditions seemed to be wrong, for the boy had not had a single bite.
After a time the lads decided to open beans and make a supper of them, with pieces of fried meat which had been left from dinner. Case brought the beans and meat out on deck, under the prow light, and they soon satisfied their hunger.
The boys sat out on deck for a long time, and then Case went in and switched off the electric stove. Teddy sat there watching the dough lifting in the pan, and the boy left him there, thinking that he would soon crawl into one of the bunks and go to sleep. Then Case went out where the other boys sat looking over the rushing water.
“That dough is coming along fine,” he exclaimed, proud of his achievement, “and will be ready to mix with more flour before long. I don’t see why women make such a fuss over baking. It is just as easy as mixing pancakes. We’ll have plenty of bread now. I’ll make it often.”
The clouds slipped away and the stars looked down. The strong electric light on the prow showed wreckage of all kinds drifting past There were trunks and limbs of trees, some green, as if the water had undermined the roots of live cedars.
While they sat there, laying plans for the future, something which looked like a battered rowboat came sailing down. It surely was a rowboat, they discovered, as it came nearer, and Clay took up the glass and waited for it to come into the circle of light.
“Boys!” he cried, as the wreck flashed into view and then disappeared down the river, “I believe that was what is left of our boat. It looked like it, anyway! Now, how could that come here?”
“Caught in the flood,” Alex said, grimly. “I don’t wonder that it is a wreck in that case. I’m a good deal of a wreck myself to-night.”