But Maurice—­dear would the safety of the old boat have been purchased, had he been swept away, to be possibly drowned in the flood, encumbered as he was with all his clothes.

“Wow!”

Thad heard this sound, although he could see nothing; and a thrill shot through him at the consciousness that it must have been made by his chum.

“Where are you, Maurice?” he shrilled, eager to lend what assistance lay in his limited power.

“Holding on to the cable of the anchor, and swallowing a pint of yellow stuff every breath!” came back in broken sentences, as though the speaker might be ejecting some of the surplus fluid whenever the opportunity offered.

So Thad gripped the rope and tried to shorten the extent of its holding; but he found this a greater task than he had bargained for, and indeed, utterly impossible, with all that sweep of the river to buck against him.

“Wait! it’s all right, and I’m coming!” he again heard the other say; and this time it seemed as though the voice must be much closer.

Then he caught his first glimpse of Maurice, amid all the foam in the rear of the boat, where the onrushing flood failed to start the anchored craft from her moorings.

In another minute he could reach out a helping hand, which being seized upon by the imperiled lad, Maurice was soon brought close enough, to admit of his climbing over the low gunwale.

“Gee! that was a close shave, though!” he gasped, as he sat up, the water pouring from him in rivulets.

Thad was pumping his hand like a machine, and almost crying in his hysterical delight.

“Oh! you gave me an awful scare, old fellow, you sure did!  I thought you was a goner, and felt like jumping in, too, myself.  It would be mighty tough to lose you, Maurice, mighty tough!” he kept saying as he squeezed the other’s hand.

“Well, a miss is as good as a mile; and the only thing I’m thinking of just now is a way to get warm.  My teeth are rattling together like the dickens.  It was just comfortable in the water; but this air cuts through me like a knife!” said Maurice, getting up on his knees.

“You must go inside at once, and I’ll have the fire booming in a jiffy.  Never mind the boat; I reckon that rope will hold us here all right till morning.  When you are warm I’m going to come out and see if I can put another anchor of some sort over.  We’ve got a rope and that fine big stone, you know.  Shoo, now, and get into the coop, you!”

In this fashion did Thad chase his chum indoors.

He busied himself with the fire, and it was not long before he had the interior of the cabin feeling comfortable.

And while the boat pitched and plunged, yet seemed to hold her own against the raging storm, Maurice changed his clothes, and was presently feeling none the worse for his involuntary bath.

Long before this the other had slipped out to fulfill his programme with regard to the second anchor.