Sam also had stretched out a hand for the third paddle, but Lon ruled in favor of Paul.
“Varley, you can have anything I’ve got!” he said warmly. “That leap-for-life, floatin’ trapeze stunt you done was amazin’ good medicine for this crowd; for my notion is, the old river ain’t got done risin’, and it ain’t got to do much more comin’ up in the world to clean swamp that garret. Good, quick action o’ yourn, son, good quick action, I tell you!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Paul modestly. “It—well, it just seemed to be a good idea. I—I hated, somehow, to lose the boat; though maybe the flood won’t go much higher.”
“No; Lon’s right.” It was the Shark who spoke, with all his customary brusqueness. “Liable to be ten feet more of a rise. How do I know? How do you know anything? Figure it out, don’t you? Just what I did! If the mouth of the valley is dammed—must be, or the river would have behaved better—the water’ll keep on rising till it’s over the top of the dam. And from the levels as the map gave ’em, and the height of the bridge piers, as I recalled ’em——”
Sam caught him by the shoulder. “Look here, Shark! Do you mean you’d figured all that out, and then didn’t tell us?”
The Shark wriggled free. “Huh! What’d have been the good of telling? Just would have worried you fellows some more—wouldn’t have helped anything or anybody. You’re all right in your way, but you don’t seem to be able to get any comfort out of calculations that go into three or more figures. So if I’d said anything, you’d have wanted to know why I said it, and when I tried to explain, you wouldn’t have understood. But if you’re so set on having me say something now, I’ll tell you that we’d better make shore. Current’s taking us down-stream, and I won’t guarantee how long the ice dam will hold. Don’t want to go over it, or through it, do you? Well then!”
“Jumpin’ Jupiter, but that’s sense!” ejaculated Lon, and fell to paddling.
Orkney and Varley followed the example. Step and Poke found the pieces of the broken thwart and added their mite. The Shark stared ahead. Sam, for a moment, was without occupation, but then he pulled off his cap and began to bail out some of the water in the boat. With the increased number of passengers a leak or two had developed.
There is no craft more difficult to manage than a flat-bottomed, square-ended punt, deep in the water, and in the grasp of a strong current. Naturally enough, the attempt was made to steer for the nearer bank, the one on which was the Grant farmhouse. It resulted in a sort of diagonal drift, in which a dozen feet were made down-stream for every foot of approach to land. Sometimes the boat was fairly across the current, sometimes her nose pointed almost directly down the river. More than once collision with floating débris threw her off her course. In short, she might have been compared to a crippled and bulky-bodied beetle, struggling with broken legs to swim to the shore of a stream into which it had fallen. But as the beetle, by virtue of hard work, draws nearer the land, so the big punt edged away from the swifter current of mid-stream. Presently she was scraping through the boughs of a young grove, the trees of which were submerged to their tops. The Shark, playing lookout man, sang out his news:
“Hullo! There’s the Grants’ house! We’re just about abreast of it.”