“Nawthin’ but Bass Rock, an’ ez it’s only ten feet square we mowt ez well hope—no, no, it ain’t no uset.”
“We might swim.”
“I can’t swim.”
“I can—a little. If you could we would get out.”
Then the clouds broke and the rain came down in torrents. They were enveloped in blackness and could no longer see one another.
To Dawson, sitting in the stern, his hands grasping the sides of the boat, his head bowed against the storm, it seemed as though they had suddenly been carried out on a great sea. Land was near, but it might as well have been a thousand miles away. A plunge over the side and a few strong strokes might take him to safety. But he could not desert the old man—not till he felt the craft sinking beneath him and the water closing over his head. The boat swung up and down in monotonous cadence, and he felt himself being carried helplessly on and on.
There was a flash of lightning, a deafening crash overhead, and all was dark again. It was but for an instant, and yet he saw clearly, hardly a stone’s throw away, a small house on the river bank. A thin wreath of smoke was fighting its way out of the chimney against the rain. In one window there was a light, and in that light a man was standing, complacently smoking a pipe and peering out through the narrow panes and over the river, watching the play of the lightning along the Tuscaroras.
Huckin half rose to his feet.
“It’s ole Hen Andrews,” he cried. “I wonder ef he seen us.”