“It’s Clay!” shouted Jule. “Can’t you see it’s Clay!”
In a moment, Jule was in the water, too, and both boys were diving after the figure they had seen in the eddy.
They caught it in a moment, and managed to get it to the boat. Captain Joe and Case supplied ropes, and in an incredibly short space of time, Clay lay stretched out on the deck.
“He’s dead!” cried Alex “I just know he’s dead!”
“They stripped him of his clothes and threw him in!” wailed Jule.
[CHAPTER XXIII—THE LOST CHARTER IS FOUND]
An instant after being laid on the deck, however, Clay opened his eyes and smiled up into the faces of his friends.
“He’ll be saying, ‘Where am I?’ in a minute!” Alex cried, dancing joyfully about the prostrate figure. “That is the usual thing in stories, you know. He’ll have to say, ‘Where am I?’ and I’ll have to tell him that he mustn’t talk. Look at him grin.”
“What gets me,” Captain Joe said, lifting the boy into a sitting position, “is how you came up from the bottom of the river without ever diving down to it. It looks uncanny.”
“The lost channel!” answered Clay weakly.