“What do you think happened?” asked Janet.
“I guess the anchor stone came loose,” answered her brother. He reached over with the handle of the net and pushed back into the basket one of the big, blue-clawed crabs that was trying to crawl out from beneath the covering of green seaweed.
“The oars are gone, too,” said Janet.
This was true. When Teddy slipped, the time he was lifting in the last crab his sister caught, he had knocked both oars overboard. They were now floating away.
“Maybe I can reach ’em with the crab net,” suggested Ted. He leaned over the side of the punt, stretching as far he could toward one of the floating oars.
“Look out—don’t fall!” warned Janet.
Teddy almost went overboard, but pulled himself back just in time. He could not reach the oar, which drifted farther away.
“Where’s the other oar, Janet?” her brother asked.
“It’s on this side, but it’s farther off than that one,” the little Curlytop girl answered.
Teddy looked over. The second oar was, indeed, at a greater distance from the punt than the one the little boy had been trying to reach. He saw at a glance that it would be of no use to try to get this back.