“Which sea are we ploughin’ through now, Paul?” he said.  “Is it the Atlantic or the Pacific or one I ain’t heard tell of a-tall, a-tall?  But which ever it is, I’m Christopher Columbus the second, on my way to discover a new continent bigger than all the others put together!  Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! but that was a narrow escape!  It made my flesh creep!”

Sol had shifted the boat in her course, just in time to escape an ominous snag, but in a moment his joyousness came back, and without giving Paul time to answer, he continued: 

“A boat goin’ down stream on a river is shorely the right way o’ travelin’ fur a lazy man like me.  I wish it wuz all like this!”

The violence of the rain abated somewhat in an hour or so, but it continued to come down for a long time.  Far after midnight the clouds began to part.  A damp patch of sky showed, but it was clear sky nevertheless and soon it broadened.

The flooded world rose up before the five voyagers, the vast river, still black in the night light, floating trees, perhaps rooted up by the stream from shores thousands of miles to the north and west, the low dim outline of forest to right and left, and all around them an immense desolation.  Everything to other minds would have been gigantic, somber, and menacing.  Gigantic it was to the five, but neither somber nor menacing.  Instead it told them of safety and comfort and it was, at all times, full of a varied and supreme interest.

As soon as the light was strong enough for them to find a suitable place they pulled the boat among the trees on the western shore and tied it up securely.  Here they made a critical examination and found that none of their precious goods had suffered a wetting.  Powder, provisions, clothing, all were dry and every one except the watch went to sleep with a sound conscience.

CHAPTER VII

THE LONE VOYAGER

Henry Ware awoke, rubbed his eyes, and looked through the tree trunks at the Mississippi, now wider than ever.

“What do you see, Tom?” he asked of Tom Ross, who had kept the watch.

“Nothin’ but a black speck fur across thar.  It come into sight only a minute ago.  Fust I thought it wuz a shadder, then I thought it wuz a floatin’ log, an’ now I do believe it’s a canoe.  What do you make uv it, Henry?”

Henry looked long.

“It is a canoe,” said he at last, “and there’s a man in it.  They’re floating with the stream down our way.”

“You’re right,” said Tom Ross, “an’ ef I ain’t mistook that man an’ that canoe are in trouble.  Half the time he’s paddlin’, half the time he’s bailin’ her out, an’ all the time he’s making a desperate effort to git to land.”

The others were now up and awake, and they gazed with intense interest.

“It’s a white man in the canoe ez shore ez I’m a livin’ sinner!” exclaimed Shif’less Sol.