Part 7 (1/2)

The fragment of the broken bridge continued to move around as the swirl of the waters kept turning it. Max was watching eagerly, and making his calculations with as much earnestness as though it were one of his chums in peril instead of their most bitter enemy.

He believed there was a good chance for him to reach Shack, if he could manage in some way to stretch out from the end of the railing just beyond where Toby clung. And acting on this inspiration he hastily clambered past the other.

”What's doing, Max?” demanded Toby, immediately.

”If I can reach him at all it's got to be from the end of the raft here, the further point, don't you see?” Max replied, still pus.h.i.+ng along, with Toby close at his heels, ready now to a.s.sist to the best of his ability.

So Max, on reaching the extreme tip of the uneasy raft, climbed out as far as he could go, and called back to Toby to grip him by the legs so that he might have both hands free to work with when the critical moment arrived.

It could not be long delayed, for as they swung slowly in the grip of the swirling current he could see the swimming Shack's head close by.

Once the almost exhausted boy disappeared, and Max felt his heart give a great throb as he thought it was the very last he would ever see of Shack; but almost immediately afterwards the head came in sight again, for Shack was a stout fellow, and desperation had nerved him to accomplish wonders.

Presently Max gritted his teeth together for the effort he meant to put forth, and upon which so much depended.

”Swim this way as hard as you can, Shack!” he had shouted again and again, and the boy in the river was evidently bent on doing what he was told, though hardly able to sustain himself on account of complete exhaustion, added to a severe case of fright.

Then the crisis came. Max had figured nicely, and knew to a fraction of a second just when he must make his clutch for the swimmer. Shack saw what was coming, and as though ready to give up and sink if this effort to save him failed, he threw out one of his hands despairingly toward Max.

As he managed to clutch the swimmer's wrist Max braced himself, and gradually drew Shack toward the woodwork of the floating bridge, an inch as it were at a time, but constantly coming.

Presently he had him close enough for Steve, who with Bandy-legs was near by, to get a frenzied grip on the other arm of the exhausted boy; and then together they managed to help him aboard.

It was necessary that they change their position quickly, since their combined weight at one end of the wreckage of the bridge was causing it to sink in an ominous way.

”Move along there, Bandy-legs and Steve!” called Max; ”or we'll be under water!”

Fortunately the other boys realized what was meant, and they hurried away, constantly clinging to the friendly railing which had proven so valuable all the while, in keeping them from being washed overboard.

Max helped Shack crawl along, for the boy was panting for breath, and almost choked with the vast quant.i.ties of water he had swallowed.

In this way they presently reached their old positions about the middle of the floating timbers. It was a wild picture that confronted them as they now took the time to look around them. The river was narrowing somewhat again and of course the current became considerably swifter on this account, so that the bridge raft rocked violently back and forth, sometimes even threatening them with a fresh disaster in the shape of a jam, and consequent overturn.

”My stars! what's the answer going to be to this thing?” Steve called out, after one of these exciting experiences, during which it was with considerable difficulty that the whole of them maintained their hold.

Max had seen to it that the tired Shack was fastened to the rail with a strap he chanced to have in his pocket at the time; only for that possibly the other might have lost his weakened grip, and been carried off.

”Oh! don't think of giving up yet, Steve,” Max sang out cheerily; ”the further we get downstream the more chances there are that we'll either be rescued by men in boats, or else find a way ourselves to get ash.o.r.e.

We've got so much to be thankful for that it seems as if we'd soon hit on a way out. Keep watching, and if some eddy in the current happens to throw us on a bar close to the sh.o.r.e, we'll hustle to reach land the best we know how, no matter where it is, or how far from home.”

”T-t-that's what I s-s-say,” stammered Toby; ”all I w-w-want is to feel the g-g-good old g-g-ground under my f-f-feet again. I never thought it could be so n-nice as it seems right now.”

”You never miss the water till the well runs dry!” chanted Bandy-legs, now getting over his fit of depression, and beginning to pluck up new courage and spirits.

”We are whooping it up at a mile a minute clip, ain't we, Max?” Steve asked, a short time later.

”Well, I'd hardly like to say that, Steve,” answered the other; ”but we're certainly making pretty swift time, twenty miles an hour, perhaps nearer thirty, I'd say. And that's going some, considering that we haven't any motor to push us along.”

”And didn't they tell me it was about twenty miles down the valley that Asa French lived?” Steve went on to say, showing that even in the dreadful grip of the flood he had remembered that Bessie French was somewhere down below, and possibly also exposed to the perils that threatened all who lived along the banks of the furious Evergreen River.