Chapter III.
LUCKILY the water was only four feet deep, as Charley found when he tried to touch bottom; so he stopped swimming, and, with the water nearly up to his shoulders, stood still and began to think what to do next.
The canoes—including the sunken Midnight—were a good mile from the shore, and although the sandy shoal on which Charley was standing was firm and hard it was of small extent, and the water all around it was too deep to be waded.
“You’ll have to get into one of our canoes,” said Harry.
“How am I going to do it without capsizing her?” replied Charley.
“I don’t believe it can be done,” said Harry, as he looked first at the Sunshine and then at the Twilight; “but then you’ve got to do it somehow. You can’t swim a whole mile, can you?”
“Of course I can’t, but then it wouldn’t do me any good to spill one of you fellows by trying to climb out of the water into a canoe that’s as full now as she ought to be. Besides, I’m not going to desert the Midnight.”
“I thought the Midnight had deserted you,” said Joe. “If my canoe should go to the bottom of the lake without giving me any warning, I shouldn’t think it a bit rude to leave her there.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” exclaimed Charley; “but come here and help me get my canoe afloat again. We can do it, I think, if we go to work the right way.”