The raft had been anchored, carelessly enough, by running an inner corner lightly aground.  The Babe’s weight, slight as it was, on the outer end, together with his occasional ecstatic, though silent, hoppings up and down, had little by little sufficed to slip the haphazard mooring.  This the Babe was far too absorbed to notice.

All at once, having just slipped a nice half-pounder onto the forked stick which served him instead of a fishing basket, he noticed that the wooded point which had been shutting off his view on the right seemed to have politely drawn back.  His heart jumped into his throat.  He turned—­and there were twenty yards or so of clear water between the raft and the shore.  The raft was gently but none too slowly gliding out toward the tumbling whitecaps.

Always methodical, the Babe laid his rod and his string of fish carefully down on the logs, and then stood for a second or two quite rigid.  This was one of those dreadful things which, as he knew, did happen, sometimes, to other people, so that he might read about it.  But that it should actually happen to him!  Why, it was as if he had been reading some terrible adventure and suddenly found himself thrust trembling into the midst of it.  All at once those whitecaps out in the lake seemed to be turning dreadful eyes his way and clamoring for him!  He opened his mouth and gave two piercing shrieks which cut the air like saws.

“What’s the matter?” shouted a very anxious voice from among the trees.

It was the voice of Uncle Andy.  He had returned sooner than he was expected.  And instantly the Babe’s terror vanished.  He knew that everything would be all right in just no time.

“I’m afloat.  Bill’s raft’s carrying me away!” he replied in an injured voice.

“Oh!” said Uncle Andy, emerging from the trees and taking in the situation.  “You are afloat, are you!  I was afraid from the noise you made that you were sinking.  Keep your hair on, and I’ll be with you in five seconds.  And we’ll see what Bill’s raft has to say for itself after such extraordinary behavior.”

Putting the canoe into the water, he thrust out, overtook the raft in a dozen strokes of his paddle, and proceeded to tow it back to the shore in disgrace.

“What on earth did you make those dreadful noises for?” demanded Uncle Andy, “instead of simply calling for me, or Bill, to come and get you?”

“You see, Uncle Andy,” answered the Babe, after some consideration, “I was in a hurry, rather, and I thought you or Bill might be in a hurry, too, if I made a noise like that, instead of just calling.”

“Well, I believe,” said Uncle Andy, seating himself on the bank and getting out his pipe, “that at last the unexpected has happened.  I believe, in other words, that you are right.  I once knew of a couple of youngsters who might have saved themselves and their parents a lot of trouble if they could have made some such sound as you did, at the right time.  But they couldn’t, or, at least, they didn’t; and, therefore, things happened, which I’ll tell you about if you like.”