"T-t-that's what I s-s-say," stammered Toby; "all I w-w-want is to feel the g-g-good old g-g-ground under my f-f-feet again. I never thought it could be so n-nice as it seems right now."
"You never miss the water till the well runs dry!" chanted Bandy-legs, now getting over his fit of depression, and beginning to pluck up new courage and spirits.
"We are whooping it up at a mile a minute clip, ain't we, Max?" Steve asked, a short time later.
"Well, I'd hardly like to say that, Steve," answered the other; "but we're certainly making pretty swift time, twenty miles an hour, perhaps nearer thirty, I'd say. And that's going some, considering that we haven't any motor to push us along."
"And didn't they tell me it was about twenty miles down the valley that Asa French lived?" Steve went on to say, showing that even in the dreadful grip of the flood he had remembered that Bessie French was somewhere down below, and possibly also exposed to the perils that threatened all who lived along the banks of the furious Evergreen River.
Max too had given more than a few thoughts to this fact during the earlier part of that eventful day.
"The way we're going," he told Steve, "we ought to be down there before a great while; and let's hope we'll strike luck, and get a chance to go ashore."
"And also find the girls all right," added Steve, who had apparently quite forgotten how Bessie had recently cut him cruelly, while suffering from an unfortunate misunderstanding.
"But what ails Toby there; he seems to be excited over something?" Max went on to exclaim; for Toby was bending forward, and showed plain evidences of growing interest.
"Hey! fellers!" he now burst out with, "just looky there, will you? We're in for a f-f-fresh lot of t-t-trouble seems like. W-w-watch him p-p-pop up again, would you? Whew! but he's a b-b-bouncer, too, biggest I ever saw in my born days, and must be twenty feet long. Max, it's a s-s-sure enough s-s-sea serpent, ain't it, now?"