Lucky made a grimace of intense abhorrence in Pierce’s direction.  “Sure!  I don’t want to miss all this fun I hear about.”

“When you get through, if you do, which you probably won’t,” Bridges told him, with a bleak and cheerless expression, “set a gill-net to catch me.  I’ll be down on the next trip.”

“Good for you!” cried the Countess.

“It ain’t good for me,” the man exclaimed, angrily.  “It’s the worst thing in the world for me.  I’m grand-standing and you know it.  So’s Lucky, but there wouldn’t be any living with him if he pulled it off and I didn’t.”

Doret chuckled.  To Pierce he said, in a low voice:  “Plenty feller mak’ fool of demse’f on dat woman.  I know all ’bout it.  But she ‘ain’t mak’ fool of herse’f, you bet.”

“How do you mean?” Pierce inquired, quickly.

‘Poleon eyed him shrewdly.  “Wal, tak’ you.  You’re scare’, ain’t you?  But you sooner die so long she don’t know it.  Plenty oder feller jus’ lak’ dat.”  He walked to the nearest skiff, removed his coat, and began to untie his boots.

Lucky Broad joined the pilot, then looked on uneasily at these preparations.  “What’s the idea?” he inquired.  “Are you too hot?”

’Poleon grinned at him and nodded.  Very reluctantly Broad stripped off his mackinaw, then seated himself and tugged at his footgear.  He paused, after a moment, and addressed himself to Bridges.

“It’s no use, Kid.  I squawk!” he said.

“Beginning to weaken, eh?”

“Sure!  I got a hole in my sock-look!  Somebody ’ll find me after I’ve been drowned a week or two, and what’ll they say?”

“Pshaw!  You won’t come up till you get to St. Michael’s, and you’ll be spoiled by that time.”  Kid Bridges tried to smile, but the result was a failure.  “You’ll be swelled up like a dead horse, and so’ll I. They won’t know us apart.”

When Pierce had likewise stripped down and taken his place at the oars, Broad grumbled:  “The idea of calling me ‘Lucky’!  It ain’t in the cards.”  He spat on his hands and settled himself in his seat, then cried, “Well, lead your ace!”

As the little craft moved out into the stream, Pierce Phillips noticed that the Kirby scow, which had run the Courteau boats a close race all the way from Linderman, was just pulling into the bank.  Lines had been passed ashore and, standing on the top of the cargo, he could make out the figure of Rouletta Kirby.

In spite of a strong steady stroke the rowboat seemed to move sluggishly; foam and debris bobbed alongside and progress appeared to be slow, but when the oarsmen lifted their eyes they discovered that the shores were running past with amazing swiftness.  Even as they looked, those shores rose abruptly and closed in, there came a mounting roar, then the skiff was sucked in between high, rugged walls.  Unseen hands reached forth and seized it, unseen forces laid hold of it and impelled it forward; it began to plunge and to wallow; spray flew and wave-crests climbed over the gunwales.