oe could be dragged clear
under water; the whirlpool was no such gigantic thing as that. But it
was absolutely certain that when the canoe reached the funnel shaped
aperture in the center it would instantly be overturned, and just as
surely Clay would be sucked into the black depths below, and whirled off
by the fierce undercurrent with no possible chance of reaching the
surface.

This was the awful fate that stared him in the face; and all that while
he drifted nearer and nearer the end, crying vainly for help, and
beating the frothy water with his paddle.

CHAPTER XV

RANDY'S PROPOSITION

At the moment when Clay's situation seemed most hopeless--and while his
horrified companions were looking on with the silence of despair--Nugget
leaned forward in his canoe, opened the hatch, and drew out a big ball
of cord.

"Ned! Ned!" he shouted eagerly, "can you do anything with this outline?
I forgot I had it."

Ned's face flushed with joy, and paddling alongside of Nugget he
snatched the cord.

"Follow me to the shore," he cried, "and you too, Randy."

An instant later the three lads were standing on the gravel beach,
separated from the whirlpool by no less than sixty or seventy feet.

Ned waved his hand to Clay, and shouted hoarsely: "Fight hard, old
fellow! We'll save you in a minute."

Then turning quickly to his companions he demanded: "How long is this
line?"

"One hundred and forty feet," answered Nugget. "The man I bought it from,
said so."

Ned tied the end of it to a ring in the stern of the Pioneer, and ran
down the beach, unrolling the ball as he went. Sixty feet away he
stopped and cut the cord, then he hurried back with the remainder in his
hand. He tied a short stick to the end of the ball, and throwing both
into his canoe scrambled after them.

"Now you fellows keep tight hold of that," he directed, pointing to the
cord that lay outstretched on the beach. "Pay it out as I go, and when I
give the word pull with all your might."

Randy and Nugget began to understand now, and they allowed the line to
trail through their fingers as Ned paddled furiously away, heading for a
point a little above the whirlpool.

It was a critical and intensely exciting moment. Clay had divined what
Ned intended to do, and with this gleam of hope to animate him, he was
fighting desperately to keep away from the gurgling hollow which was
slowly sucking him into its embrace.

There was scant time to spare whe