“Get aboard—quick—everybody!” Sam cried, and helped Varley to obey the order. Then he turned and caught Step’s shoulder.
“Pile in! Hustle Poke, too! It’s our only chance!”
Step resisted. “Wait a minute, Sam! There are no oars. You can’t do anything. You can’t——”
Sam half pitched the objector into the punt. Poke, taking the hint, followed, unassisted.
Lon ripped up a narrow floor-board.
“Here’s oars in the makin’,” he shouted. “All aboard—everybody that’s goin’!”
There was no need of further exhortation. In thirty seconds more the Safety First Club was afloat, and the boat was again beginning to drift away from the old house.
CHAPTER XX
THE PRIZE SNATCHED FROM THE FLOOD
Lon’s floor-board gave material for three rough-and-ready paddles, short, awkward to handle, yet more or less serviceable. Lon himself kept one, Orkney took another, and Varley laid claim to the third.
“I’ve got to keep my blood circulating,” he explained. “Thought I was pretty well dampened before that last go, but now—whew! Say, I’d like to be run through a clothes wringer just as I stand. Next best thing’ll be working at something.”