"I hopes you will, Archie, If I loses my feet, I goes down-stream. That's plain. No man could catch his feet in that water. An' if I goes all the way down-stream, I goes clean under Black Pool ice. An' if I goes under Black Pool ice, I can't get out, because the current will hold me there. That's plain, too. You couldn't pull me out o' the stream. If you could do that, I could get out alone. You'd jus' go down with me. So you leave me go."
"Billy, I——"
"Oh, I isn't goin' t' fall anyhow, Archie. An' if I does, I'll make a fight. If I can grab anything on the way down; an' if I can hang in the stream, we'll talk it over again."
"Billy——"
"That's all, Archie."
With that Billy Topsail, the pack of food on his back (since if he won the other bank he must have sustenance for the chances of his journey to Poor Luck Barrens), waded into the water.
Presently Billy Topsail was ankle deep in the stream. The water foamed to his calves. Suspense aggravated him. He splashed on—impatient to come to the crisis that challenged him. It was a stony bed—loose, round, slippery stones; and a stone turned—and Billy Topsail tottered in the deeper suck of the current. It was nothing to regain his balance in that shallow. And he pushed on. But by and by—time being relative to suspense, it seemed a long, long time to Archie Armstrong, waiting on the snowy bank—by and by Billy Topsail was knee deep and anxiously engaged; and mid-stream, where the ripple was dancing down in white-capped, choppy waves, was still proportionately far distant.
Billy paused, then, to settle his feet. The footing was treacherous; the water was white to his thighs—the swift, dizzy, noisy passage was confusing. For a new advance he halted to make good his grip of the bottom and to brace and balance himself against the insistent push of the current.
Archie shouted: