“It doesn’t look reasonable!” Case insisted. “I don’t believe it!”
“The kid is right,” Clay declared. “I have often read about boats meeting the flood the second time, once when they passed it, and once when it caught up with them.”
The roaring sound which Mose had referred to now grew louder, sounding like the rush of a long and heavily loaded freight train.
While the lads listened, hardly knowing what to do to protect themselves, Mose pointed a shaking hand at a spot far down the lagoon. Clay looked and saw a great blaze on what seemed a wooded knoll to the west of the river.
“There’s a camp down there!” he said.
“That makes it nice!” grinned Alex. “No honest men ever made camp in that hole at this season of the year! It is dollars to tripe that if we don’t put on power the crest of the flood will wash us down, when the full strength comes, and beach us among a band of river pirates! If we don’t get under way up stream we’ll have do to something to make the anchor hold!”
While the boys were discussing some way of accomplishing this, for they did not like the idea of breasting the flood, the crest of the flood came seething down the stream, a wall of water four feet high! It swept over the point of land between the river and the bayou and dashed against the Rambler.
The anchor held for a minute, then the boys knew that they were in motion. The current seemed stronger there than in the river itself.
“The water is cutting a new channel below,” Clay shouted, as the Rambler was swept away, “and we are headed for that swamp. Now, we are in a peck of trouble!”