A dreary, drizzling day succeeded. They made themselves as comfortable as they could in the cabin, and went carefully over their food supplies.
“Enough for two days, anyhow,” said Mr. Ringold. “After that, well——”
He shrugged his shoulders, and did not finish. But they all knew what he meant.
They were in the middle of a wide and desolate stretch of the Mississippi. In the far distance, as they rushed along with the swift current, they could see small towns and villages. They could not, however, reach them, for they could not steer the raft. They tried to make a long sweep, such as the lumbermen use, but they had no pole long enough, and no tools with which to cut one out of the lumber at their disposal.
Joe and Blake did, indeed, try to construct a pole out of one of the loose slabs on the side of the shack, by splitting it with a small axe. But the result was only a weak, wobbly staff, that broke the first time it was used.
“We’ve just got to drift on—until something happens,” said Mr. Ringold.
Joe examined their cameras, for they had two, and also the developed and undeveloped films. The latter were safe in the water-tight cases. In the afternoon, when it cleared a little, Joe and Blake took more moving pictures from the front end of the raft.
They saw no craft of any kind. They seemed alone on the waste of waters.
Night came, and they floated on. They ate less now, for they wanted to make their food supply last as long as possible. But the victuals seemed to go alarmingly fast.
“Maybe we’ll drift ashore to-morrow,” said Mr. Ringold, hopefully. “If we do we’ll leave the raft, and walk until we get to some place where we can hire a boat. For, now that we are reasonably certain that our friends are somewhere down the river, we must make every effort to find them.”