Given two miles of river over which to sweep with fury, and a forty-mile-an-hour gale can kick up a tremendous sea, besides penetrating every crack and cranny to be found in a flimsy cabin, chilling the very marrow of the sleepers.

It was about two in the morning when Maurice awoke to find the boat pitching violently and himself shivering with cold, for they had let the fire die out on retiring, such was the heat of the cabin.

“Hi there, show a leg, Thad.  There’s something doing, and I rather reckon your plagued old storm’s arrived ahead of time.  D’ye want to freeze to death, boy?  Pile out and let’s get a fire started.  Then we’d better make sure our cable’s going to hold, for if we broke loose in this howling sea it’d be good-by to our boat, perhaps to us, too.” was the way he brought his chum out of the bunk, “all standing,” rubbing his eyes as the candle which Maurice had lighted pictured the scene.

Hurriedly dressing while their teeth chattered, the boys started a blaze in the stove, and after a bit thawed out sufficiently to go outside, muffled in sweaters and coats, to see what all this racket meant.

They found a wild scene there, with the waves rushing down the river most furiously.  Already the atmosphere had grown so frigid that ice was forming on the side of the cabin where this spud and foam dashed.

Looking out upon the raging waters the boys shivered at the sight, even with scanty light from the heavenly bodies that were part of the time obscured behind masses of black clouds.

It was frittering snow, and the prospect of a spell of bad weather looked very promising.

“Let me catch you making any more predictions of storms; won’t there be trouble headed your way?” shouted Maurice, with mock severity; whereat the weather sharp laughed and began to feel of the rope that fastened them to the shore.

“If the wind should change there might be a chance of our being smashed against the shore here.  If it was light I’d say it would pay us to get the anchor out yonder to kind of hold the boat off; but to look at that water I don’t think our little dinky would hold out five minutes,” continued Maurice, shaking his head.

It was finally concluded to retire to the warmth of the cabin and wait until the morning broke, when they could decide what should be done.

For some time they sat there, now dozing by the stove, and anon starting up as some unusually weird contortion on the part of the boat gave them the impression that the end had come, and they were about to be tossed into the raging flood.

Maurice was just sinking into some sort of condition resembling sleep when there was a sudden wilder rush of wind than at any time previously.

And as he started up, thrilled with a sensation of coming peril, he felt a new motion to the shanty-boat that portended trouble.

“The cable’s broken, pard, and we’re afloat!” he shouted, as the equally bewildered Thad struggled up alongside him.