“Huh! He can’t have drowned,” Johnny reasoned.
The next instant a thought struck him which set him doing the Australian crawl with a vengeance. The man may have known the general direction of their boat and might have gone for it. If he had, what of Mazie?
After three minutes of breathless swimming, Johnny arrived in their channel to find his fears unfounded. Everything was as serene as when he had left it.
“Come on,” he said to Mazie as he climbed into the boat, “we’re going to get out of here.”
Seizing a long pole, he stood boldly upright in the boat and sent it shooting through the water. Ten minutes later he beached his boat, then dragged it to a low shed which served as boat-house.
As he turned about from snapping the padlock, the moon came suddenly out from behind a cloud and shone down one of those long channels of the marsh. In the midst of a channel was a clinker-built boat—and a man was standing in it.
“That’s him,” Johnny chuckled, “I—I’m sort of glad he didn’t drown. Bet he hasn’t got his rifle, though. I’d like to swim back there and beat him up.”
He did not yield to this mad impulse. Mazie was pulling at his sleeve and saying in her most persuasive tone:
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
“All right,” smiled Johnny, slapping the water from his soaked trousers, “guess we’d better.”