‘You don’t suppose the fellow is going to rise right up and look at you, do you?’ inquired the corporal with fine scorn, adding: ‘Did you hear anything?’
‘Not a sound,’ admitted Whitson.
‘Then it’s pretty certain there was no one in her,’ said the corporal. ‘Most likely she got caught on a snag and turned in here, broke loose, and drifted off again. The general was right—the fellow has either gone up the bank or struck inland. All the same, we’d better search the bank hereabouts.’
But the projecting roof of the hole offered a sure protection to the boys; and though more than once they could distinguish the trampling of the feet of the soldiers above their heads, their hiding-place remained undiscovered, and presently the search was discontinued.
‘It’s no use,’ said the corporal. ‘He is not here. Never was, I should say. We ‘re only wasting time. Let us go back to camp.—Hello! What do you suppose that is?’
That was Ephraim’s cap, which, supported by its own lightness and the water beneath it, hove in sight, floating gracefully down stream, some forty yards away.
Ephraim saw it at the same moment, and softly whispered to Lucius to come and see the fun.
‘It looks like a cap,’ answered Whitson, peering through the gloom. ‘Blamed if I don’t believe it is a cap.’
‘With a head inside it?’ pursued the corporal, also doing his best to see.
‘I can’t say. Shall I try and find out?’