Running at full speed, the boat might have cut the net and passed on, but drifting with the current as she was when she came to it, something like two hundred feet of stout fibre were wound about the propeller, about the skag, and about the rudder and rudder-post, as the motors were reversed in an effort to back away.
As the boy leaned over the stern to ascertain the extent of the damage, the clatter of the motors died out and he knew that the clogging of the propellers had been responsible.
In a moment the Rambler was drifting aimlessly downstream, swinging this way and that with the current, spinning along broadside to the wash of the river oftener than in any other position.
“Now, I’m in a beautiful mess!” the boy declared. “I shall never be able to get that stuff out of the propeller without beaching the boat.”
As the boy was lifting a heavy oar in the hope of sending the motor boat over to the Indiana side of the river, he heard a slow, drawling hail from the mouth of a little creek some distance down.
“’Tend to your rudder!” shouted a hoarse voice. “You’ll go over the rapids in a heap if you keep on that way!”
“Propeller and rudder clogged!” shouted Alex. “Come on out and tow me in! You’ll be well paid for your work.”
The boy thought, in a moment, that the last sentence had been entirely superfluous, for their experience on the river had been that waterside characters were always too willing to assist any crippled boat. At all times their charges were exorbitant.
“All right!” the man called from the shore, and then the boy saw a small skiff shoot away from the side of a dilapidated-looking shanty boat which lay half hidden by a thicket at the mouth of the creek.
When the man in the skiff reached the Rambler, he rowed completely around her as if examining her good points. He was a long, lanky, sour-visaged individual with long black hair and beard. He was dressed in the homespun cotton so common with rivermen.