t Lewston had left
in the boat.

He picked it up, but he could do nothing with it. If it had been an oar,
now, it might have been of some use. He tried to pull up the seat, but
it was nailed fast.

On he rapidly floated, down the middle of the stream; the boat sometimes
sidewise, sometimes with one end foremost, and sometimes the other. Very
soon he lost sight of Lewston and Harvey, and the last he saw of them
they were hurrying by the edge of the water, in the woods. Now he sat
down, and looked about him. The creek appeared to be getting wider and
wider, and he thought that if he went on at that rate he must soon come
to the river. The country seemed unfamiliar to him. He had never seen
it, from the water, when it was overflowed in this way.

He passed a wide stretch of cultivated fields, mostly planted in
tobacco, but he could not recollect what farmer had tobacco down by the
creek this year. There were some men at work on a piece of rising
ground, but they were a long way off. Still, Harry shouted to them, but
they did not appear to hear him.

Then he passed on among the trees again, bumping against stumps, turning
and twisting, but always keeping out in the middle of the current. He
began to be very uneasy, especially as he now saw, what he had not
noticed before, that the boat was leaking badly.

He made up his mind that he must do something soon, even if he had to
take off his clothes and jump in and try to swim to shore. But this, he
was well aware, would be hard work in such a current.

Looking hurriedly around, he saw, a short distance before him, a tree
that appeared to stand almost in the middle of the creek, with its lower
branches not very high above the water. The main current swirled around
this tree, and the boat was floating directly toward it.

Harry's mind was made up in an instant. He stood up on the seat, and as
the boat passed under the tree he seized the lowest branch.

In a moment the boat was jerked from under his feet, and he hung
suspended over the rushing water.

He gripped the branch with all his strength, and giving his legs a
swing, got his feet over it. Then, after two or three attempts, he
managed to draw himself up and get first one leg and then his whole body
over the branch. Then he sat up and shuffled along to the trunk, against
which he leaned with one arm around it, all in a perspiration, and
trembling with the exertion and excitement.

When he had rested awhile, he sto