But he could not so quickly give up his efforts to save himself.  There was the box of biscuit yet.  Taking his knife from his pocket, he succeeded in detaching the cover of the box, and then, using this as a paddle, he sought with frantic efforts to force the boat nearer to the shore.  But the tide was running very swiftly, and the cover was only a small bit of board, so that his efforts seemed to have but little result.  He did indeed succeed in turning the boat’s head around; but this act, which was not accomplished without the severest labor, did not seem to bring her nearer to the shore to any perceptible extent.  What he sought to do was to achieve some definite motion to the boat, which might drag her out of the grasp of the swift current; but that was the very thing which he could not do, for so strong was that grasp, and so swift was that current, that even an oar would have scarcely accomplished what he wished.  The bit of board, small, and thin, and frail, and wielded with great difficulty and at a fearful disadvantage, was almost useless.

But, though he saw that he was accomplishing little or nothing, he could not bring himself to give up this work.  It seemed his only hope; and so he labored on, sometimes working with both hands at the board, sometimes plying his frail paddle with one hand, and using the other hand at a vain endeavor to paddle in the water.  In his desperation he kept on, and thought that if he gained ever so little, still, by keeping hard at work, the little that he gained might finally tell upon the direction of the boat—­at any rate, so long as it might be in the river.  He knew that the river ran for some miles yet, and that some time still remained before he would reach the bay.

Thus Tom toiled on, half despairing, and nearly fainting with his frenzied exertion, yet still refusing to give up, but plying his frail paddle until his nerveless arms seemed like weights of lead, and could scarce carry the board through the water.  But the result, which at the outset, and in the very freshness of his strength, had been but trifling, grew less and less against the advance of his own weakness and the force of that tremendous tide, until at last his feeble exertions ceased to have any appreciable effect whatever.

There was no moon, but it was light enough for him to see the shores—­to see that he was in the very centre of that rapid current, and to perceive that he was being borne past those dim shores with fearful velocity.  The sight filled him with despair, but his arms gained a fresh energy, from time to time, out of the very desperation of his soul.  He was one of those natures which are too obstinate to give up even in the presence of despair itself; and which, even when hope is dead, still forces hope to linger, and struggles on while a particle of life or of strength remains.  So, as he toiled on, and fought on, against this fate which had suddenly fixed itself upon him, he saw the shores on either side