“Well, I don’t see any oars, so it doesn’t matter very much.... What’s that? Don’t want to stay here all night, you say? Well, I don’t want to, either; but I’m not going to worry about it. Maybe something will turn up.”
Step dismally pointed a number of very good reasons for doubting that anything could turn up to their advantage; but Poke declined to lose heart.
“I know, I know!” he said. “Luck’s against us just now—guess I’m a regular Jonah, anyway. But it’ll have to turn—say! I’m not sure but it has turned.”
“How?” Step demanded skeptically.
Poke waved a hand at the dark flood. “Suppose that had caught us. This is no picnic, you’re thinking? I tell you it’s a party compared with being out in that mess. Goodness knows, I’ve got troubles enough in life, but I’m not quite ready to be drowned yet!”
“Well, I’m not, either,” Step admitted. “Only—only I do wish it’d stay light a little longer.”
“With you there!” cried Poke earnestly.
The gloom, in fact, was for the chums—as for the larger party in the old house—the most insistent of the night’s discomforts. It was worse than the pelting rain, from which, indeed, they had found shelter of a sort; it was worse than the chill of the air which increased as the night advanced, for they could huddle together for warmth. It even seemed to offer more menacing perils than the steadily rising flood, whose approach to the summit of the hillock it concealed. How Step and Poke endured the dragging hours can better be imagined than described. They had their alarms—many of them. Mysterious sounds came from the bosom of the flood; an owl hooted sepulchrally; occasionally a squall swept by, whistling shrilly about the shed. There were long intervals, though, in which they heard only the monotonous beat of the rain and a sound very like a heavy murmur from the river; and at such times weariness took its toll, and both boys slept, fitfully, brokenly and restlessly.
Rather oddly, neither of them suspected the manner in which the waters were creeping toward their refuge. Neither had the mathematical bent of the Shark to work out a theory of a valley like a plugged bowl; and so, while they were perfectly aware of the discomforts of their situation and while they were full of anxiety as to the fate of their friends, the discovery, at last, that the still rising river was invading the shed came with surprise as well as consternation.
They turned again to the boat, and made desperate efforts to drag it out; but in this they were hampered and handicapped by the darkness. They did succeed in turning it on its side, but there it stuck, in spite of all their efforts.