Lest he be detected and fired upon, he worked his way back to his own channel, swam rapidly up this channel and then crossed the stretch of rushes to the other side.
For a time after that he swam noiselessly in the shadow of rushes down the channel toward the mysterious one’s boat, swam until he made out the form of an oval bottomed, clinker-built boat. A tall man was standing up in it. Johnny again caught the gleam of a rifle barrel.
Johnny took one deep, silent breath, then disappeared under the water.
Swimming strongly under water, he came up to the right of the boat and almost directly beneath it. He could hear the man’s deep breathing and caught fragments of husky mutterings.
“Now’s the time,” Johnny thought to himself.
Gripping the edge of the boat he gave it a sudden upward thrust which all but capsized it. There followed at once a small splash and a large one.
“His rifle goes—now he takes the plunge,” thought Johnny as his heart went racing.
“He’s safe enough now. He’ll not find his rifle at the bottom in this darkness. He’s a tiger without his fangs.”
Johnny even had the temerity to lift himself up as high as he could in the water and peer over the boat.
It was then that he got a real shock. The man was nowhere to be seen.