It cost them some effort, for the hatch was a big one. But it floated buoyantly when they had dragged it overboard; and it scarcely sank at all under Harvey’s weight; and it held him and Tom Edwards when the latter had stepped cautiously off on to it. They made it fast alongside, with a piece of rope cut from dredging gear. Then they ran joyously for the cabin.
The cook met them with a flood of protestations, but they shut him up in short order. With the lantern light, they helped themselves to the meagre stores of the Brandt, and stuffed their pockets with biscuit and corn bread, baked for Haley and the mate. They also took matches, and they exchanged their ragged oil-skins for better ones. They had earned them ten times over, and they were leaving without a penny of wages for all the hard labour they had done.
“Say good-bye to Haley for me,” said Tom Edwards, pausing a moment before the helpless captive. “And tell him I hope to meet him again some day. And if I do, he’ll be sorry.”
They carried the cook into his galley, and shut him in. Then they found an extra pair of oars, stepped aboard the inverted hatch, the finest craft in all the world to them, and pushed for shore.
It was not easy, sculling the clumsy hatch, but Harvey made fair work of it, after he had cut a scull-hole in the combing, with his knife; and Tom Edwards aided by paddling on either side, making up with energy what he lacked in skill. The work warmed them, and they threw off their oil-skin coats.
The tide was running up the river and carried them some distance out of the course they had tried to make; but they came in to land finally and sprang out on shore. Harvey stooped and picked up a handful of the coarse dirt and gravel, and handed it gravely to Tom Edwards.
“Merry Christmas, Tom Edwards,” he said. “It’s the real thing—the shore—the dry land once more. Isn’t it bully?”
Tom Edwards threw his arms about his stalwart companion and fairly hugged him.
“Harvey,” he said, “you’re a comrade worth having. You’ve stood by through thick and thin, and you’ve lost chances to escape in order to stand by me. I won’t forget it.”
Harvey, freeing himself from his friend’s grasp, offered his hand and they shook heartily. They started off, but Harvey turned back once and, seizing one of the oars, shoved the hatch out into the stream. Then he threw the oars after it.