“No, no!” insisted Joe. “Capture or sink the canoe first, and attend to me afterward. I am all right, I tell you. I can easily keep afloat until you come back.”
“Why, boy, you haven’t got a breath to spare,” said Arthur. “I know it by the way you talk. Come in out of the wet.”
“You held fast to your fly-rod through it all, didn’t you?” said Roy, as he took me from Joe’s hand.
“Yes. I didn’t know whether or not I could outrun them, and I wanted something to defend myself with in case they came up with me.”
When Joe tried to climb into the skiff, he found that he was by no means in as good condition as he thought he was. He could scarcely help himself at all, and his chums were obliged to pull him in by main strength. The moment they let go of him he sank down against the stern locker and panted loudly; but he was as full of determination as ever.
“Now go up and sink the canoe,” he almost gasped.
But a single glance was enough to show Arthur and Roy that it was too late to do any thing with the canoe. Jake and his brother heard the order that Joe shouted at his friends while he was in the water, and made all haste to put themselves out of harm’s way. When Joe was hauled into the skiff they were so close to the shore that all attempts to intercept them would have been unavailing.
“It’s no use, Joe,” said Arthur. “They’re too far off, and there’s Matt Coyle standing on the bank.”
“But for Joe’s sake we will see what we can do,” exclaimed Roy.
As he spoke, he opened the forward locker and took from it a stout paper bag. When he first put it there, Arthur and Joe supposed that it contained lemons; but when Roy opened it, they saw that it was filled with potatoes.
“They helped us out of a scrape once, and why shouldn’t they do so again?” said Roy. “My plan is to pull into shore, drive Matt and his boys into the bushes, clap onto the canoe with the boat-hook and tow her out into the pond.”
Arthur declared that that was the way to do it, but subsequent events proved that it wasn’t. They laid hold of their oars again, but before the skiff had gone far toward the shore, Joe Wayring, who had by this time recovered his power of speech and motion, announced that Roy’s plan wouldn’t work at all, and that it was useless to make any effort to sink or capture the canoe. And the rowers found it so when they faced about and looked toward the shore.