Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/369

 with the blade of my oar the best I knew how. Arthur was standing on one of the lockers when the scow struck us, and he and the lamp made a plunge of ten feet in the clear before they touched the water."

"Do you mean to say that they ran into you a purpose?" exclaimed the guide.

"Of course they did. We cut them off from the shore, as you directed, and that old scow of theirs came at us like a battering-ram. Matt heard Joe tell us to-night to sink the canoe, and that was what put it into his head to run into us."

Meanwhile Arthur Hastings had worked his way around to the bow of the skiff and secured the painter, one end of which he made fast to a ring in the stern of the canoe. The chase was over, of course. They could not continue the pursuit in the dark, for the squatter could easily elude them in a hundred different ways, and neither would it be prudent to follow him in the canoe. The little craft was intended to carry only one person, with a very limited allowance of camp equipage, and the added weight of one of the boys would have sunk