,
forgetting that all its oil had been exhausted the evening before. It
burned for a few minutes with a sickly flame, and then went out. Even
that feeble light had been a comfort. It had showed him that
everything was still all right inside the "shanty," besides enabling
him to find and put on the clothes that he had hung near the stove to
dry. As he finished dressing, and was again standing in utter darkness
puzzling over his situation, he was nearly paralyzed by a blinding
glare of light that suddenly streamed into the window nearest him. It
was accompanied by the hoarse roar of steam, a confusion of shoutings,
and the loud clangor of bells. Without a thought of the weather, Winn
again flung open the door and rushed into the open air. So intense and
dazzling was the flood of yellow light, that he seemed to be gazing
into the crater of an active volcano. It flashed by as suddenly as it
had appeared, and the terrified boy became aware that a big steamboat
was slipping swiftly past the raft, but a few feet from it. The
bewildering glare had come from her roaring furnaces; and had not their
doors been thrown open just when they were, she would have crashed at
full speed into the raft, with such consequences as can easily be
imagined. As it was she was barely able to sheer off in time, and a
score of voices hurled back angry threats at the supposed crew of the
raft, whose neglect to show a lantern had so nearly led to death and
destruction.

So long as he could detect the faintest twinkle of light from the
rapidly receding boat, or hear the measured coughings of her exhausted
steam, Winn stood gazing and listening, regardless of the rain that was
drenching him to the skin. He was overwhelmed by a realization of his
situation. That steamboat had told him as plainly as if she had spoken
that the _Venture_ was not only afloat, but had in some way reached the
great river, and was drifting with its mighty current. He had no idea
of how long he had thus drifted, nor how far he was from home. He only
knew that the distance was increasing with each moment, and that until
daylight at least he was powerless to help himself.

As he turned towards the door of the "shanty," he stumbled over
something, which, by stooping, he discovered to be the branch of a
tree. To the keen-witted boy this was like the sight of a printed page.

"That accounts for the noise on the roof that woke me," he said to
himself. "The raft was