“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?”
“Of course he isn’t,” cried Joe. “We’ll find him in a few minutes. He must be somewhere near by, and he’s sleeping so sound that he don’t hear us. You know how hard it is to wake him up.”
“Tom is a first-rate swimmer, and if he has spilt himself out of his canoe and she has sunk, he has swum ashore,” said Charley. “My opinion is that we had better stay just where we are until daylight, and then look for him along the shore. He’s worth a dozen drowned fellows, wherever he is.”
Charley’s advice was taken, and the boys waited for daylight as patiently as they could. Daylight—or rather dawn—came in the course of an hour, but not a glimpse of the missing canoe did it afford. The tide had already changed, and the top of the treacherous sand-spit was once more above water, and not very far distant from the canoes. As soon as it was certain that nothing could be seen of Tom on the water his alarmed comrades paddled toward the north shore, hoping that they might find him, and possibly his canoe, somewhere at the foot of the rocks.