They saw a house floating apast them at last,
They heard a child scream in the house as it passed!
Amazed and bewildered, they sought ev’rywhere
To escape from the peril that threatened them there.
But neither a boat nor a skiff was at hand
Which they felt had the strength ’gainst the waves to withstand,
Save an old, dinky john-boat, and it wasn’t fit,
Yet Dan, the bass-fiddler, went rowing in it
To see, so he said, if the john-boat would do,
When out in the current the dinky boat flew,