A frightened exclamation came from the interior of the boat, and then the small door on that side was flung open. At the same instant a woolly head was thrust out of the galley window, and a trembling voice cried, "Golly, Marse Cap'n! Wha' dat ar? Yo' heah um?"
"Yes, Solon, I heard it, and you want to come here as quick as you can. Some one is in trouble," answered the old man, who was standing with the girl in the open doorway. He held a lamp above his head, and was peering anxiously in the direction of the splashings and flounderings that Winn, sitting in the shallow water, but tightly wedged between the log and the boat, was making in his efforts to extricate himself.
"Who's there?" cried the old man, who could not yet make out what was taking place; "and what are you doing?"
[Illustration: "'Who's there?' cried the old man">[
"It's me!" returned Winn, regardless of his grammar; "and I am sinking in this awful mud. Hurry up and push your boat away from the log, or I shall be drowned!"
While the old man and the negro exerted all their strength at the pole, with which they finally succeeded in pushing the boat a foot or so out into the stream, Sabella was also busy. Though greatly excited, and somewhat alarmed by the unexpected appearance of a human being in that place, and his perilous situation, she still had presence of mind enough to run for a rope, one end of which she fastened to the table. She carried the other end out through the door, and tossed it over the side just in time for Winn to catch it, as the moving of the boat once more gave him freedom of action.
Hauling himself up by this welcome rope, and at the same time being assisted by the two men, the boy quickly gained the open doorway, where he stood blinking in the bright lamplight, while mud and water ran from him in streams. He faced the occupants of the boat, who, standing a few steps back in the room, regarded him with undisguised wonder, not unmixed with suspicion. On the table behind them stood a small, gaudily-dressed object, that Winn at first took to be a child. Upon his appearance it remained motionless for a few seconds, and then, with a frightened cry, it sprang to the little girl's shoulder, from which it peered at the stranger, chattering angrily all the while.
"Well, I am blest if this isn't a most extraordinary situation!" exclaimed the old man. "It suggests a tableau of Venus rising from the sea."