The water was perfectly smooth, so that there was really no danger that the runaway canoes would capsize, unless their owners should start up in a fright, and not fully understand that their canoes were no longer on solid land. Neither was there much chance that they would be run down by steamboats, for the steamboat channel was near the south shore of the river, a long distance from the sand-spit. Joe remembered how fast the tide had risen the day before, and he calculated that the missing canoes must have been afloat about half an hour before the water reached the place where he was sleeping. They would naturally drift in the same direction in which the Dawn was drifting; and all that it would be necessary for Joe to do in order to overtake them would be to increase the speed at which his canoe was moving.
There was a scarcely perceptible breeze blowing from the south. Joe got up his mainmast and set his sail. Light as the breeze was, the canoe felt it, and began to move through the water. Joe steered by the stars, and kept the Dawn as nearly as possible on the course which he supposed the other canoes had taken. He had no lantern with him, and could see but a little distance ahead in the dark, but he shouted every few moments, partly in order to attract the attention of any of the missing canoeists, and partly in order to warn any other boat that might be in the neighborhood not to run him down.
After sailing in this way for at least an hour, and hearing no sound whatever but his own voice and the creaking of the canoe's spars, Joe was startled at perceiving a black object just ahead of him. He avoided it with a vigorous movement of his paddle, and as he drifted close to it with the wind shaken out of his sail he saw to his great delight that it was a canoe.
It was the Sunshine, with her canoe-tent rigged over her, and her commander sound asleep. Taking hold of her gunwale, Joe drew the two canoes together, and put his hand gently on Harry's forehead. Harry instantly awoke, and hearing Joe begging him as he valued his life to lie perfectly still, took the latter's advice, and asked, with some alarm, what was the matter. When he learned that he was adrift on the river he sat up, took down his tent, and getting out his paddle, joined in the search for Tom and Charley.
"They must be close by," said Harry, "for all three canoes must have floated away at the same time. Tom and Charley sleep sounder than I do, and if I didn't wake up, it's pretty certain that they didn't."
Presently Charley's canoe was overtaken. Charley had been awakened by the sound of Harry's paddle and the loud tone in which Harry and Joe were talking. He was sitting up when the Dawn and the Sunshine overtook him; and having comprehended the situation in which he found himself on awaking, he was making ready to paddle ashore.
There was now only one canoe missing—the Twilight. Harry, Joe, and Charley took turns in shouting at the top of their lungs for Tom, but they could obtain no answer except the echo from the cliffs of the north shore. They paddled up the river until they were certain that they had gone farther than Tom could possibly have drifted, and then turned and paddled down stream, shouting at intervals, and growing more and more alarmed at finding no trace of the lost canoe.
"She can't have sunk, that's one comfort," exclaimed Harry, "for the bladders that Tom put in her at Chambly would keep her afloat, even if he did manage to capsize her in the dark."
"He took the bladders out yesterday morning, and left them on the sand just in the lee of his canoe," said Charley. "Don't you remember that he sponged her out after we landed, and that he said that he wouldn't put his things back into her until we were ready to start?"
"I remember it now," replied Harry. "And I remember that I did the same thing. There's nothing in my canoe now except my water-proof bag and my blankets. But they're not of much consequence compared with Tom. Boys, do you really think he's drowned?"