Page:The New Penelope.djvu/144

 directly the catastrophe came. His strength wavered, the boat veered round, a sudden gust and roll of water took it broadside, and over she went, keel up, more than a mile from land.

But this was not the last of Joe Chillis—not by any manner of means. He had trapped beaver too many years to mind a ducking more or less, if he only had his strength. So, when he came up, he clutched an oar that was floating past him, and looked about for the boat. She was not far off—the tide was holding her, bobbing up and down like a cork. In a few minutes she was righted, and Chillis had scrambled in, losing his oar while doing it, and regaining it while being nearly upset again.

It had become a matter of life and death now to keep afloat, with only one oar to fight the sea with; and, though hoping little from the expedient, in such a gale—blowing the wrong way, besides—Chillis shouted for assistance in every lull of the tempest. To his own intense astonishment, as well as relief, his hail was answered.

"Where away?" came on the wind, the sound seeming to flap and flutter like a shred of torn sail.

"Off the creek, about a mile?" shouted Chillis, with those powerful lungs of his, that had gotten much of their bellows-like proportions during a dozen years of breathing the thin air of the mountains.

"All right!" was returned on the snapping, fluttering gale. After this answer, Chillis contented himself with keeping his boat right side up, and giving an occasional prolonged "Oh-whoo!" to guide his rescuers through the thickening gloom. How long it seemed, with the growing darkness, and the effort to avoid another upset! But the promised help came at last, in the shape of the mail-carrier's plunger, her trim little mast catching his eyes, shining white and bare out of the dusk. Directly he heard the voices of the mail-carrier and another.

"Where be ye? Who be ye?"