“‘But what’s it fur, pard?’ asks Billings for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time.  ‘Why don’t we go where it’s dry?  The flood’s risin’ all the time.’

“‘Let it rise,’ I says.  ’I cal’late when it gets high enough them floats’ll rise with it and lift the automobile up, too.  If she’s anchored bow and stern she’ll hold, unless it comes on to blow a gale, and to-morrow mornin’ at low tide maybe you can tinker her up so she’ll go.’

“‘Go?’ says he, like he was astonished.  ’Do you mean to say you’re reckonin’ to save the car?’

“‘Good land!’ I says, starin’ at him.  ’What else d’you s’pose?  Think I’d let seventy-five hundred dollars’ wuth of gilt-edged extravagance go to the bottom?  What did you cal’late I was tryin’ to save—­the clam flat?  Give me that dory rope; I’m goin’ after them anchors.  Sufferin’ snakes!  Where is the dory?  What have you done with it?’

“He’d been holdin’ the bight of the dory rodin’.  I handed it to him so’s he’d have somethin’ to take up his mind.  And, by time, he’d forgot all about it and let it drop!  And the dory had gone adrift and was out of sight.

“‘Gosh!’ says he, astonished-like.  ’Pard, the son of a gun has slipped his halter!’

“I was pretty mad—­dories don’t grow on every beach plum bush—­but there wa’n’t nothin’ to say that fitted the case, so I didn’t try.

“‘Humph!’ says I.  ’Well, I’ll have to swim ashore, that’s all, and go up to the station inlet after another boat.  You stand by the ship.  If she gets afloat afore I come back you honk and holler and I’ll row after you.  I’ll fetch the anchors and we’ll moor her wherever she happens to be.  If she shouldn’t float on an even keel, or goes to capsize, you jump overboard and swim ashore.  I’ll—­’

“‘Swim?’ says he, with a shake in his voice.  ‘Why, pard, I can’t swim!’

“I turned and looked at him.  Shover of a two-mile-a-minute gold-plated butcher cart like that, a cowboy murderer that et his friends for breakfast—­and couldn’t swim!  I fetched a kind of combination groan and sigh, turned back the sail, climbed aboard the automobile, and lit up my pipe.

“‘What are you settin’ there for?’ says he.  ‘What are you goin’ to do?’

“‘Do?’ says I.  ’Wait, that’s all—­wait and smoke.  We won’t have to wait long.’

“My prophesyin’ was good.  We didn’t have to wait very long.  It was pitch dark, foggy as ever, and the tide a-risin’ fast.  The floats got to be a-wash.  I shinned out onto ’em, picked up the oar that had been left there, and took my seat again.  Billings climbed in, too, only—­and it kind of shows the change sence the previous evenin’—­he was in the passenger cockpit astern, and I was for’ard in the pilot house.  For a reckless daredevil he was actin’ mighty fidgety.

“And at last one of the floats swung off the sand.  The automobile tipped scandalous.  It looked as if we was goin’ on our beam ends.  Billings let out an awful yell.  Then t’other float bobbed up and the whole shebang, car and all, drifted out and down the channel.