The rope had parted, and they were left helpless on the flats.
"Oh, George, what shall we do?" almost sobbed Bert, for he was only ten, and the wind, and rain, and seething floods around him raged most furiously.
George was frightened too, but remembering his twelve years, he tried to look confident and hopeful, as he pointed out the fact that some one would surely come after them.
"But—but won't the tide come in before then?" queried Bert, his voice trembling still, and his cheeks all wet with rain. "I think I feel it a little higher now."
"It's only the waves makes that," returned George, soothingly, although the same horrible possibility had just presented itself to him.
The storm, however, did not last long; but with the going down of the wind, the tide began to come in faster, and Bert stood on his toes, and then sank the crab car, and stood on that. It was a good mile across the river to Yorking—too far to permit of any signals being seen there—and the nearer shore was quite wild, the woods extending down almost to the water's edge.
And still the tide came rushing in; and then the sun went down, and Bert began to cry in earnest, for he was both cold and hungry, besides feeling it a decidedly unpleasant sensation to have the water creep up little by little toward his neck.
"Why don't Captain Sam come after us?" he sobbed, hiding his face on George's coat sleeve.
"Perhaps he will; but, you see, he don't know we've lost our boat; so we'll just have to wait long enough for them to get worried about us at home."
George spoke bravely, but his heart beat very hard and fast, for now the water had reached above where his trousers were rolled, while Bert, who was almost a head shorter, was wet to the waist.