"Say--we can tie the lines to the raft!" proposed Ned, struck with the idea.
"I should smile!" assented Hal, slangily.
"One above and one below," continued Ned. "Let's fix the upper one first."
As they skirted the outer logs, on ahead of them turtles, sunning themselves, slid hastily into the water, and the route of the boat was thus marked by a succession of splashes.
The boys were nearing the head of the raft, when Ned stopped sculling, and asked:
"It's about right, I guess," replied Hal. "We can tie to that pin."
"Well," said Ned, "I'll hold the boat steady, and you fix the line."
He turned the boat in hard against a log from which jutted a stout wooden pin almost touching the water. Hal, reaching over the bow, securely tied the end of his line. Then with a shove he sent the boat away, toward the middle of the slough, and Ned gently sculled until they had gone at right angles about twenty yards, with the line trailing between the boat and the raft.
Now Hal deftly attached the first hook by its two feet of cord, baited it with a bit of liver, and let it slide overboard. Three feet farther along the line he fastened another hook; and in this manner they went edging across the slough, until the fifty hooks had been tied on and baited.
The next step was to sink the line. Hal tied upon the free end two heavy coupling links which had been stored in under the bows. Ned sculled ahead, slightly up stream, to make allowance for the sluggish current, until the line, with its dangling hooks and liver, was fairly taut.
"There she goes!" remarked Hal; with a clink the coupling links disappeared beneath the surface, and the line followed.
They were on their way to the foot of the raft, to set out their second line, when a piercing howl from the main shore startled them. It was Bob, lonesome, disgusted and impatient, demanding that they return to land and to him. Where he had been, they did not know. But now he was sitting at the water's brink, directly opposite them, and accusing them of deserting him.
However, Bob, hearing the voice, and judging that his howling was to be in vain, decided that since they would not come to him he would go to them; whereupon with a yelp of defiance he plunged into the slough, and yapping at intervals laid a course for the boat.