Chapter 13

WINN'S LONELY CRUISE.

During the half-hour that Winn allowed to elapse before he considered it safe to rise from his recumbent position in the bottom of the skiff, he had ample opportunity to recover his breath, and reflect upon the new situation into which he had been so strangely forced. At first he fancied that he heard sounds of pursuit, and momentarily expected to be greeted by a stern order from the bank to bring the skiff ashore. He wondered if a failure to comply would be followed by a rifle-shot, and then began to calculate the chances of being hit in such a case. But why should he be shot at? What had he done that he should be arrested, threatened with jail and hanging, and treated like an outlaw generally? Whom did these men take him for? and who were they? By the manner in which they had spoken of a judge, they must represent the law in some way; but why he should be an object of their pursuit puzzled the boy more than a little.

To be sure, he had now laid himself open to the suspicion of being a river thief, by carrying off their skiff. Would it not be well to return it at once? He could talk to them, and explain how he happened to be on the island, while still at such a distance from shore as to be beyond their reach. They might shoot, though, and if they really considered him the rascal they pretended, it was almost certain that they would. No, that plan would not work. The only thing left to be done was to take the skiff to Dubuque, telegraph to his father from there, or try and find one of the Major's friends in that city who would do so for him, and at the same time provide him with food and shelter until his father came. Yes, that was the best plan.

Having reached this determination, Winn sat up and looked about him. The light which he had mistaken for dawn was that of a late-rising moon, and it hardly penetrated the mist hanging low over the river. There was nothing in sight; not even the dark mass of timber on the island. Winn might have been in the middle of the ocean for all that he could see or hear. Never in his life had the boy felt so utterly forsaken and alone. He decided to pull diagonally across the current towards shore, the mere sight of which would be reassuring. But where were the oars? Until this moment he had not noticed that there were none in the boat. For some unknown reason they had been taken from it when the party landed on the island; and now the lonely navigator was utterly without the means of propelling or even guiding his craft. He tried to tear up one of the floor boards, with the idea of using it as a paddle; but it was nailed in place so firmly as to resist his utmost efforts. Finally, faint for want of food, exhausted, and disheartened, the poor boy threw himself in the bottom of the skiff and yielded to his despair. At length he fell asleep.

So the dawn of Winn's second day on the river caught him napping, as the first had done. In its gray light the skiff drifted past the little city of Dubuque, perched high on the bluffs of the western bank, but no one saw it. There were several steamboats and trading scows tied to the narrow levee, but their crews were still buried in slumber. Even had they been awake they would hardly have noticed the little craft far out in the stream, drifting with the hurrying waters. In a few minutes it was gone, and the sleeping city was none the wiser for its passing. So for hours it drifted, now bow on, then broadside to, and as often stern first; here caught and spun round by an eddy, then tossed aside and allowed to proceed on its unguided course. The cotton-woods on the tow-heads beckoned to it with their trembling fingers; but it paid no heed. Grim snags lay in wait for it, but it nimbly avoided them, and as the hours passed each one of them saw the drifting skiff some miles farther away from the island at which this strange voyage was begun.

When Winn finally awoke, he was so bewildered, and so much at a loss to account for his surroundings, that for a minute he lay motionless, collecting his scattered senses. It certainly was late in the day, for the sun was shining full upon him from high in the heavens. He had that comfort at least; but oh! how he ached from lying on that hard floor, and how faint he was from hunger.

The boy's head rested on a thwart, and he faced the after-end of the skiff. As he was about to rise, his glance fell on something wrapped in newspaper and tucked under the stern seat. If it should only prove to be food of any description, "even burned mush," thought Winn, grimly, how happy it would make him! In another second he was undoing, with eager fingers, the lunch of crackers and cheese that Sheriff Riley's wife had so thoughtfully thrust into her husband's hands as he left the house the morning before, and which he had as thoughtfully tucked under the stern seat of his skiff. He was probably thinking of it, and wishing he had it, at this very moment. As for Winn, he was eating it as fast as possible, and thinking that he had never tasted such good crackers or such a fine piece of cheese in his life. With each mouthful his spirits rose and his strength returned, until, when the last crumb had disappeared and been washed down with a double handful of sweet river-water, the boy's pluck and cheerfulness were fully restored.

Now what should he do? He did not know that he had passed Dubuque, though he feared that such might be the case. Thinking of it brought to mind the island with those upon whom he had so recently turned the tables, and left as prisoners within its limits. He even laughed aloud as he pictured them toiling, as he had toiled the evening before, to construct a raft on which to escape. "I wonder if they found any one in that log-hut," he thought, recalling its lighted window. "And, oh! if it should have been father! It might have been. He might have seen my signal-fire, found my message, and got as far as the hut. Now what will he do? Oh, how I wish I could get back! Why didn't I think of all this before leaving the island? That was a horrid sound in the woods, though. And that animal! I wonder what it could have been?"

By this time the current had carried the skiff close in to the drowned bottom-lands of the Illinois shore. They were covered with a heavy growth of timber, and Winn knew that in many places the wellnigh impassable swamps which this concealed extended back a mile or more from the channel. Otherwise he would have abandoned the skiff and made the attempt to swim ashore.

The Iowa bluffs rose invitingly on the opposite side of the river. On them he saw a few scattered settlements, but they were too far away, and he must wait until the current set him in that direction before thinking of making a landing. He saw an occasional ferry-boat making its slow way across the river, but it was always either too far above him or too far below him for his signals to be noticed, and so the hours dragged on until it was late afternoon, and Winn was again beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.

"I can't spend another night in this wretched boat!" he exclaimed aloud, when he saw that the sun was within an hour of its setting. "I'll swim the whole width of the river first!"

During the day he had passed a number of small islands, but had not cared to attempt a landing on them. He knew that he would be even worse off on an island than in the skiff, and so he had watched them glide by without giving them any particular thought. Suddenly it occurred to him that on any one of these islands he might pick up an oar, a paddle, or at least something that would answer in place of these, and from that instant they acquired a new interest.

The next one that he approached was only a tow-head, which is a sand-bar on which has sprung up a thick growth of slender cotton-woods, or other quick-shooting, water-loving trees.

"I might find what I want there as well as on a larger island," thought Winn, "and, at any rate, I'll make a try for it." So when the skiff had drifted as near the tow-head as it seemed likely to, and was rapidly sliding past it, the boy threw off his coat, kicked off his shoes, and, taking one end of the skiff's painter with him, plunged overboard and began to swim towards the desired point.

The distance was not more than a hundred feet, but the current swept him down so much more rapidly than he expected that he was barely able to catch one of the very last of the tow-head saplings and cling to it. While his own progress was thus checked, that of the skiff was not, and in a second the painter was jerked from his hand.

Exhausted as he was, Winn was on the point of letting go his hold on the sapling and making a desperate effort to overtake the rapidly receding skiff. Fortunately he had enough practical sense, though this is not generally credited to sixteen-year-old boys, to restrain him from such a rash act. So he crawled out on the sand beach, and sat there watching what he considered to be his only hope grow smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared. As it did so, the sun slowly sank behind the western bluffs; and though the boy did not look up from the wet sand on which he had flung himself, he knew instinctively that another night, with its darkness, its chill, and its nameless terrors, was upon him.

He was so numbed by this latest disaster that he had not the heart even to seek a place of shelter for the night. What good would anything that he could find or construct do him? He had neither matches nor food, dry clothing nor bedding. What did it matter, though? He would probably be dead before the sun rose again, anyway. So the poor lad nursed his misery, and might, in truth, have lain on those wet sands until he perished, so despairing was he, when all at once he was aroused by a sound so strange to hear in that place that, though he raised his head to listen, he thought he must be dreaming. He wasn't, though, for there came again to his ears, as distinct as anything ever heard in his life, a merry peal of clear girlish laughter. Not only that, but it sounded so close at hand that the boy sprang to his feet and gazed eagerly in the direction from which it came, fully expecting to see its author standing near him.