Afloat on the Flood Part 7

The fragment of the broken bridge continued to move around as the swirl of the waters kept turning it. Max was watching eagerly, and making his calculations with as much earnestness as though it were one of his chums in peril instead of their most bitter enemy.

He believed there was a good chance for him to reach Shack, if he could manage in some way to stretch out from the end of the railing just beyond where Toby clung. And acting on this inspiration he hastily clambered past the other.

"What's doing, Max?" demanded Toby, immediately.

"If I can reach him at all it's got to be from the end of the raft here, the further point, don't you see?" Max replied, still pushing along, with Toby close at his heels, ready now to a.s.sist to the best of his ability.

So Max, on reaching the extreme tip of the uneasy raft, climbed out as far as he could go, and called back to Toby to grip him by the legs so that he might have both hands free to work with when the critical moment arrived.

It could not be long delayed, for as they swung slowly in the grip of the swirling current he could see the swimming Shack's head close by.

Once the almost exhausted boy disappeared, and Max felt his heart give a great throb as he thought it was the very last he would ever see of Shack; but almost immediately afterwards the head came in sight again, for Shack was a stout fellow, and desperation had nerved him to accomplish wonders.

Presently Max gritted his teeth together for the effort he meant to put forth, and upon which so much depended.

"Swim this way as hard as you can, Shack!" he had shouted again and again, and the boy in the river was evidently bent on doing what he was told, though hardly able to sustain himself on account of complete exhaustion, added to a severe case of fright.

Then the crisis came. Max had figured nicely, and knew to a fraction of a second just when he must make his clutch for the swimmer. Shack saw what was coming, and as though ready to give up and sink if this effort to save him failed, he threw out one of his hands despairingly toward Max.

As he managed to clutch the swimmer's wrist Max braced himself, and gradually drew Shack toward the woodwork of the floating bridge, an inch as it were at a time, but constantly coming.

Presently he had him close enough for Steve, who with Bandy-legs was near by, to get a frenzied grip on the other arm of the exhausted boy; and then together they managed to help him aboard.

It was necessary that they change their position quickly, since their combined weight at one end of the wreckage of the bridge was causing it to sink in an ominous way.

"Move along there, Bandy-legs and Steve!" called Max; "or we'll be under water!"

Fortunately the other boys realized what was meant, and they hurried away, constantly clinging to the friendly railing which had proven so valuable all the while, in keeping them from being washed overboard.

Max helped Shack crawl along, for the boy was panting for breath, and almost choked with the vast quant.i.ties of water he had swallowed.

In this way they presently reached their old positions about the middle of the floating timbers. It was a wild picture that confronted them as they now took the time to look around them. The river was narrowing somewhat again and of course the current became considerably swifter on this account, so that the bridge raft rocked violently back and forth, sometimes even threatening them with a fresh disaster in the shape of a jam, and consequent overturn.

"My stars! what's the answer going to be to this thing?" Steve called out, after one of these exciting experiences, during which it was with considerable difficulty that the whole of them maintained their hold.

Max had seen to it that the tired Shack was fastened to the rail with a strap he chanced to have in his pocket at the time; only for that possibly the other might have lost his weakened grip, and been carried off.

"Oh! don't think of giving up yet, Steve," Max sang out cheerily; "the further we get downstream the more chances there are that we'll either be rescued by men in boats, or else find a way ourselves to get ash.o.r.e.

We've got so much to be thankful for that it seems as if we'd soon hit on a way out. Keep watching, and if some eddy in the current happens to throw us on a bar close to the sh.o.r.e, we'll hustle to reach land the best we know how, no matter where it is, or how far from home."

"T-t-that's what I s-s-say," stammered Toby; "all I w-w-want is to feel the g-g-good old g-g-ground under my f-f-feet again. I never thought it could be so n-nice as it seems right now."

"You never miss the water till the well runs dry!" chanted Bandy-legs, now getting over his fit of depression, and beginning to pluck up new courage and spirits.

"We are whooping it up at a mile a minute clip, ain't we, Max?" Steve asked, a short time later.

"Well, I'd hardly like to say that, Steve," answered the other; "but we're certainly making pretty swift time, twenty miles an hour, perhaps nearer thirty, I'd say. And that's going some, considering that we haven't any motor to push us along."

"And didn't they tell me it was about twenty miles down the valley that Asa French lived?" Steve went on to say, showing that even in the dreadful grip of the flood he had remembered that Bessie French was somewhere down below, and possibly also exposed to the perils that threatened all who lived along the banks of the furious Evergreen River.

Max too had given more than a few thoughts to this fact during the earlier part of that eventful day.

"The way we're going," he told Steve, "we ought to be down there before a great while; and let's hope we'll strike luck, and get a chance to go ash.o.r.e."

"And also find the girls all right," added Steve, who had apparently quite forgotten how Bessie had recently cut him cruelly, while suffering from an unfortunate misunderstanding.

"But what ails Toby there; he seems to be excited over something?" Max went on to exclaim; for Toby was bending forward, and showed plain evidences of growing interest.

"Hey! fellers!" he now burst out with, "just looky there, will you?

We're in for a f-f-fresh lot of t-t-trouble seems like. W-w-watch him p-p-pop up again, would you? Whew! but he's a b-b-bouncer, too, biggest I ever saw in my born days, and must be twenty feet long. Max, it's a s-s-sure enough s-s-sea serpent, ain't it, now?"

CHAPTER VII

THE SUBMERGED FARM-HOUSE

"Gee whiz! where is it, Toby?" cried Steve. "And none of us got a gun along, worse luck. Hey, show me the sea serpent, and p'raps my camera ain't so wet but what I might crack off a picture of the same; because n.o.body's ever going to believe you when you tell that yarn. Show me, Toby!"

Toby was only too willing to comply. He had always had a decided weakness for collecting all sorts of wild animals, and that might explain why he displayed such extraordinary excitement now.

"There, right over past the end of the r-r-raft, where it s-s-sticks up like a c-c-church spire!" he stuttered, pointing as he spoke. "Now watch everybody, when he pokes his old h-h-head up again. There, don't you s-s-see? And s-s-say, he seems to be s-s-swimmin' this way, don't he?"

Steve broke out into a yell.

"Why, bless your old timid soul, Toby, that isn't any snake at all, only one of those big wild-grape vines, like enough, that's ketched on to that floating tree trunk close by. She's all twisted and turned, and I reckon a fellow as crazy over wild animals and things, like you are, might be excused for thinkin' it was a regular sea serpent."

Bandy-legs too was showing amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Guess that's the way nearly all sea serpents are discovered," he remarked, trying to make it appear as though he had not been almost as excited as Toby, when the other burst out so suddenly with his announcement.

"Well, we haven't lost any snakes," commented Max, "and so we won't try to rescue that floating vine. We've had our turn at saving menageries, seems to me, enough for one season anyway."

What Max referred to was a series of remarkable adventures that came to the four chums at a time when a storm blew down the tents belonging to a circus about to exhibit in Carson, and liberating many of the animals connected with the menagerie; but full particulars of this thrilling experience have already been given in the volume preceding this, so that further explanation would seem to be unnecessary here.

Toby did not make any reply. He rubbed his eyes pretty hard, as though wondering how they could have deceived him so strangely. But then a fellow who was devoting so much of his thoughts to the mania for strange pets in the shape of wild animals might be expected to see things in a different light from his chums, who were not addicted to that weakness.

"For one," said Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble.

So, Toby, please don't glimpse anything else, and give us fits, will you?"

Steve seemed to be intently watching the sh.o.r.e, especially whenever the revolving timbers brought them in a line with the western bank, because that was more familiar to the boys than the other, since Carson lay on that side of the river toward the setting sun.

"I'm trying to make out where we are, Max," he explained, upon seeing that the other was observing him curiously.

Bandy-legs uttered a loud and significant grunt.

"Say, Steve," he remarked with a touch of satire in his voice, "I can tell you that much, if you're all mixed up. We're squattin' on the remains of our bloomin' bridge, which used to cross the river in front of Carson; yes-siree, and we seem to be takin' an unexpected voyage downstream, without a port in sight. 'Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,' as the ship-wrecked sailor used to sing; only we _could_ manage with this muddy stuff if we had to, because it ain't salty, you know."