But Maurice—dear would the safety of the old boat have been purchased, had he been swept away, to be possibly drowned in the flood, encumbered as he was with all his clothes.
"Wow!"
Thad heard this sound, although he could see nothing; and a thrill shot through him at the consciousness that it must have been made by his chum.
"Where are you, Maurice?" he shrilled, eager to lend what assistance lay in his limited power.
"Holding on to the cable of the anchor, and swallowing a pint of yellow stuff every breath!" came back in broken sentences, as though the speaker might be ejecting some of the surplus fluid whenever the opportunity offered.
So Thad gripped the rope and tried to shorten the extent of its holding; but he found this a greater task than he had bargained for, and indeed, utterly impossible, with all that sweep of the river to buck against him.
"Wait! it's all right, and I'm coming!" he again heard the other say; and this time it seemed as though the voice must be much closer.
Then he caught his first glimpse of Maurice, amid all the foam in the rear of the boat, where the onrushing flood failed to start the anchored craft from her moorings.
In another minute he could reach out a helping hand, which being seized upon by the imperiled lad, Maurice was soon brought close enough, to admit of his climbing over the low gunwale.
"Gee! that was a close shave, though!" he gasped, as he sat up, the water pouring from him in rivulets.