"I don’t amount to much," was an idea that burdened his small brain, and the community agreed with him. If the public had seen him sculling Gran’sir Trafton’s small boat that day, it would have prophesied ill before very long. The public just then and there upon the river was very limited in quantity. It consisted of two fishermen wearily pulling against tide a boat-load of dried cod-fish, a boy fishing from a rock that projected boldly and heavily into the water, and several boys playing on the deck of an old schooner which was anchored off the shore, and had been reached by means of a raft.
The fishermen pulled wearily on. The boys on the schooner deck ran and shouted at their play. The young fisherman’s line dangled down from the crown of the big shore-rock. The small sculler out in Gran’sir Trafton’s small boat busily worked his oar. Bart did not see a black spar-buoy thrusting its big arm out of the water, held up as a kind of menace, in the very course Bart was taking. How could Bart see it? His face was turned up river, and the buoy was in the very opposite quarter, not more than twenty feet from the bow of the boat Bart was working forward with all his small amount of muscle. A person is not likely to see through the back of his head. Closer came the boat to the buoy. Did not its ugly black arm, amid the green, swirling water, tremble as if making an angry, violent threat? Who was this small boy invading the neighbourhood where the buoy reigned as if an outstretched sceptre? On sculled innocent Bartholomew, the threatening arm shaking violently in his very pathway, and suddenly--whack-k! The boat struck, threatened to upset, and did upset--Bart! He could swim. After all the unlucky falls he had had into the water, it would have been strange if he had not learned something about this element; but he had reached a place in the river where the out-going current ran with strength, and took one not landward but seaward. How long could he keep above water--that timid, shrinking face appealing for pity to every spectator? The boys on the deck of the old schooner soon saw the empty dory floating past, and they now caught also the cry for help from the pitiful face of the panting swimmer--a cry that amid their loud play they had not heard before.