The boy dropped the glass clattering on the deck and sprang into the water.
"Here, here, boy! Come back!" cried Captain Joe.
"It's Clay!" shouted Jule. "Can't you see it's Clay!"
In a moment, Jule was in the water, too, and both boys were diving after the figure they had seen in the eddy.
They caught it in a moment, and managed to get it to the boat. Captain Joe and Case supplied ropes, and in an incredibly short space of time, Clay lay stretched out on the deck.
"He's dead!" cried Alex "I just know he's dead!"
"They stripped him of his clothes and threw him in!" wailed Jule.
An instant after being laid on the deck, however, Clay opened his eyes and smiled up into the faces of his friends.
"He'll be saying, 'Where am I?' in a minute!" Alex cried, dancing joyfully about the prostrate figure. "That is the usual thing in stories, you know. He'll have to say, 'Where am I?' and I'll have to tell him that he mustn't talk. Look at him grin."
"What gets me," Captain Joe said, lifting the boy into a sitting position, "is how you came up from the bottom of the river without ever diving down to it. It looks uncanny."
"The lost channel!" answered Clay weakly.
"Boys, boys," said Captain Joe, "never mind the lost channel until we get this boy dressed and fed up."
The processes suggested by the captain were quickly accomplished, and in a short time, Clay sat in the cabin telling of the adventures of the morning. The boys listened wide-eyed.
"Now let me get this thing right," Captain Joe said. "You went into a whirlpool above the falls and came out into a cavern?"
"That's just it, exactly," Clay replied, still weak from his exertions. "I landed on a ledge, where I lay unconscious for a few moments and then followed down the channel of the underground river. There is plenty of room in the cavern," he continued, "and plenty of fresh air, but the place is shy on light. I fell many times in the darkness."
"I thought it wasn't safe for me to be in there!" grinned Alex.
"I thought it wasn't safe for me be in there!" Clay replied with a wink, "and so I made my way out as swiftly as I could. At this end of the channel, the water runs out just below the surface of the west river, and I thought I'd better reduce my weight as much as possible before going through the opening, so I took off my clothes and was pushed out by the current."