"There! There!" and the man's eyes started as he pointed down the chute.
"Great Jehovah!" cried the captain, "Git in the skiff an' go after them, quick, quick!" and before his commands could be executed he himself was seated in the skiff that was being towed along side of the flat boat, and in another moment was shooting down the stream, the boat springing like a race horse under the powerful strokes of his oars. And he was none too quick—none too soon. For as he reached the man and woman clinging together in the center of a sea of waters, their feet went from under them, and the next instant, torn asunder, they would have been beyond the reach of Cap'n Smith's powerful arm. He seized the woman by the hair and dragged her into the skiff, the man clinging to the gunwale until she was safely on board, and then crawling over himself. Both lay in a dead faint on the bottom of the boat, while Cap'n Smiff, with great beads of cold sweat starting from his forehead and rolling down over his furrowed countenance, sat with his arms hanging limp and lifeless by his side, and with eyes blankly staring at the two forms before him, muttered over and over:
"Great Jehovah! Great Jehovah!"
And let you and I, gentle reader, echo the words, though in a different humor:
"Great Jehovah!"
CHAPTER XXX.
BEN LOSES HOPE AND TURNS NAVIGATOR.
When the captain regained the "Roarer" and Bertha and Ben were safely stowed in the little stave-cabin, with kind faces bending over and kind hands ministering to them, Cap'n Willum Smiff walked slowly toward Lieutenant Jeremiah Jarphly and said:
"Jerry, yoh recommember this morn' when we tossed thet thar stave fur the chute or agin hit?"
"Yes."