The commanding officer's plan was speedily acted upon, and the raft went on swimmingly until it seemed to slide upon some obstruction, then it came to a dead stop.
"Grounded on an old corn hill, I suppose," said Jack. "Well, 'starn all,' as old Barnstable says in the Fourth Reader."
But no amount of pushing availed to move the raft, and the sudden breaking of Jack's rod gave affairs a new and discouraging aspect.
"We can't both fish with one rod," said Jack, after descending into and emerging from the depths of his mind. "I'll tell you what let's do, we'll take off our clothes, make them into a bundle, and carry them ashore on our heads, as explorers sometimes do when they ford rivers."
"What!" asked Matt, "and not get any fish for poor Mrs. Batty and her children?"
"That is a pity," said Jack, with some signs of embarrassment, and the gathering together of the loose and fleeting ends of previous plans and resolutions. "But, you see, it must be nearly eleven o'clock; we've used up an awful lot of time, and we've got to get ashore yet, and be back home by the time school is out, else the folks'll know we've been playing hookey. I wonder if we couldn't get the poor old woman some blackberries? It's only June now, though, and I never saw a ripe blackberry before the first of July. Perhaps there's some early cherries in Milman's orchard."
With this slight salve for the consciences whose wounds had begun to smart, the boys stripped once more, waded ashore through a corn-field in which the hills of sharp cut stalks seemed omnipresent, dressed themselves, and sneaked into the Milman orchard, where they made wry faces while discussing the probable value to the widow Battay of the few pale pink cherries they found. Dinner was reached and, eaten, somehow with less appetites than was usual after a morning spent in school, and then the boys, each by himself, made hasty search for whatever suitable material might be soonest found to insert between shirts and jackets, to break the force of what, in the memory of many old fellows who once were school-boys, was the inevitable penalty of truancy.
CHAPTER II.
A CORNER IN WHISKEY.
"You're the worst boy in town!"