Presently it began to rain. The water fell in great sheets, and the wind, rising steadily, drove it into every crevice in the light sheathing of the cabin. The drops drummed on the deck like hailstones.
Clay heard Case enter the cabin to prevent getting soaked, and heard him talking to Teddy, whom he seemed to have taken into his arms. Then the tired boy dropped off into sleep.
When he awoke Case was shaking him by the shoulder, and the boat was rocking and bobbing up and down, as if in the water the whole length, and not half in, as it had been when he went to sleep. He sat up on the side of his bunk and saw that every light on the boat was burning.
“Why don’t you switch off the lights and let me sleep?” he asked.
“Hear it rain!” Case advised. “And feel the _Rambler_ nodding to the rising water! Do you know where we can find that extra anchor?”
“It ought to be in there where the wheels were,” Clay replied, getting out on the floor and stumbling over Teddy, who at once retaliated by biting and clawing at his bare legs. Case drew the cub away by the tail.
“You’ll get put on the dunce block, Mr. Teddy,” he said, “if you don’t cultivate better manners You’re always under foot, like a pet pig on a ranch. No,” he went on, addressing Clay, “I’ve looked in the prow hold, and everywhere else I could think of, and the extra anchor is not in view. I wish I had by the neck the rascal who cut away the one we were using.”
“Why do you want the anchor?” demanded Clay. “Do you think the boat will float straight up in the rain? We can find the mud hook in the morning.”
“Use one of your own jokes to weigh the _Rambler_ down,” advised Alex tucked up in his bunk. “They’re heavy enough to weigh an ocean steamer down.”
Case removed Alex from his bunk, all bundled up in blankets, and rolled him about on the floor, not as a punishment for a too personal suggestion, he explained, but for the good of his digestion. Teddy assisted in the manipulation of the lad, and Captain Joe actually laughed.
“When you’ve finished with that monkeyshining,” Clay said, “perhaps you’ll tell me why you want the anchor.”
“Just you go out and look,” was all the answer Case made.
Clay did not go out and look, for it was raining steadily, and he would have been wet to the skin in a minute, but he went to the door and looked out. The little valley of the rivulet was a brimming ocean of angry water, and the natural levee which separated it from the Columbia was out of sight. In fact, there was a current running over it!
