d
and peered through the darkness of wind-whipped water and sky toward a
horizon that was already lightening. Down-river lay Detroit, a
friendly, everyday world. It was not far in miles, but it seemed lost
to him forever....

Garth took his eyes from that prospect with a wry twist to his mouth.
It chanced that they fell on the painter of the rowboat.

It was a stout Manila cord, some twenty feet in length, and tied
tightly to a ring in the bow of the boat. He looked at it dully for a
full minute before the idea came to him. Then suddenly the lethargy
bred of hopelessness left him. Garth remembered a pocket knife he had
left in the boat the day before. He climbed over the side and began to
fumble about in the darkness. First he came upon a torn handkerchief
which he hastily tied about his loins. Further probing disclosed the
knife wedged under a seat in the boat. When he had finally extricated
it, he threw the knife over the side and climbed out.

After some minutes of frantic cutting and hacking he severed the rope,
and, quickly taking up one of the ends, ran with it further along the
bank.

There was still a way of getting off the island. A cold and risky way,
but better than waiting miserably for capture. On the bank was a pile
of sawn logs, intended for firewood; and a strong rope was in his
hands. Much indeed could be done now.

* * * * *

The making of his raft proved a herculean task, a racking and almost
impossible one for a man limited by doll-sized hands and a foot-high
body. First the logs had to be rolled to the water's edge, six of
them. Each was as thick as he was tall, and this first part of his
task took him a precious half hour, every minute of which brought
nearer the dawn. Ripples like ordinary waves washed up the struggling
manikin and left him gasping as he stood braced in the cold water and
tugged one log after another out and wound the rope under and over it.
The raft had to be built in water; he would never have been able to
drag the whole thing off the beach.

When at last he wearily tied the rope end to the last log, and stuck
his knife handy in it, the clouds on the horizon were flushed by the
coming sun. But his means of escape was completed; and hanging on the
end, he shoved the raft out into the river. Right then he almost lost
his life. For when his feet left the sloping bottom, his great weight,
out of all proportion to the size of his body, pulled h