We planned all sorts of things we would do. Mark just got through plannin’ how we would go over to the lake and explore all around it when we spun around the last bend of the cut-off and shot out into the main river. That was sort of a relief, but it wasn’t any relief when somebody not a hundred feet up-stream from us yelled, “_There they are!_”
We looked quick, and who should we see but Collins and Jiggins, in their boat, coming for us as hard as they could come.
Maybe you’ve never noticed it, but when anything dangerous or exciting or unexpected happens your body does something or other without your knowing what it is going to do and without your asking it to do it. You say you were startled into doing whatever it was. Maybe that’s the explanation of it, but Mark Tidd says it’s the instinct of self-preservation. He knows a lot of words like that.
Well, this instinct of self-preservation made Mark and me do the same thing at the same time. It made us dig our paddles into the water and scoot down-stream as fast as we could make the canoe go.
A canoe is a lot faster and easier to handle than a scow—even a special scow made for the river. When we first saw Jiggins and Collins in their boat they weren’t more than a hundred feet from us, and they had the advantage of getting started first. After we got started they didn’t gain, though. We didn’t gain much, either, because what our canoe gave us in lightness they made up in strength.
They were too busy to yell at us, and we had our hands full without doing any talking in particular. We just dug in.
After a few minutes Mark whispered, “How we m-makin’ it?”
At that rate they’d catch us, or at least Mark said so.
“We’ll t-tire first,” says he. “They can k-keep it up longer than we can.”
“We might’s well give up, then,” says I, “and save ourselves all this work.”
“Can you p-p-paddle a little harder?” he asked.
“For as long as you can,” says he, “p-paddle as hard as you can. See if we can’t g-gain a little.”
It seemed like my back would break and my arms come out by the roots, but I worked just a little harder, and so did Mark. I looked back and it did seem as if we were some farther away from the other boat than we were.
We did, and we gained. At last we gained so much we turned a bend out of their sight. This didn’t mean we were far away. I should say it didn’t. It couldn’t have been two hundred feet at the very most. The turn was sharp, and like a letter “S.” The part we turned into was like the lower loop of the letter, and right at the narrowest point were some tall weeds and bushes that grew right down to the shore.