“Well, you may not believe it”—Kenneth rolled up the chart and started aft to show the helmsman—“but it’s only seven or eight feet. Pretty near as flat as a floor; about a foot a mile drop, I estimate.”
“Why didn’t we walk?” suggested Arthur, “as the Irishman said, when he saw the diver coming up out of the water at Ellis Island.”
They anchored that night about five miles from shore, in seven feet of water, and the treacherous old Gulf was as calm as a park lake under a summer zephyr.
All the next day, a roaring wind from the northwest wafted the three along; and night saw them safely anchored off the mouth of the Suwanee River.
A star-studded sky hung over them as all three boys came out on deck after all was snug and ship shape. Kenneth got out his guitar, and to the accompaniment of its softly-strummed chords the boys sang:
“Way down upon the Suwanee River,
Far, far, away.”
The spell of the quiet was on them all, and as the sound of their young voices died away, and only the hum of the strings, the lap of the rippling water, and the soft whirr of the breeze were in their ears, a feeling of sadness came over them as they realized that they were indeed far, far from home.
Arthur lay flat on his back, gazing up into the immeasurable sky; Frank lay along the rail, looking into the clear, black, velvety depths of the ever shifting water; Kenneth, absorbed in his brown study, watched the bow of the small boat abstractedly as the sharp stem cleaved the current of the tide, making little waves that glowed with phosphorescence.
For a while, no word was spoken, then “Phew!” snorted Frank. “I knew this was too good to last. What have we run up against, a fertilizer factory?”