a habit of precaution, a prudential
tone of mind which he had acquired in service, that led him at the last
moment to say (making Coronado tremble in his boots), "Mr. Glover, have
you thoroughly overhauled the cord?"

"Give her a look jest before we went up to breakfast," replied the
skipper. "She'll hold."

Coronado, who stood three feet distant, blew a quiet little whiff of smoke
through his thin purple lips, meanwhile dreamily contemplating the
speaker.

"Git in, you paddywhack," said Glover to Sweeny. "Grab yer paddle. T'other
end; that's the talk. Now then. All aboard that's goin'. Shove off."

In a few seconds, impelled from the shore by the paddles, the boat was at
the full length of the towline and in the middle of the boiling current.

"Will it never break?" thought Coronado, smoking a little faster than
usual, but not moving a muscle.

Yes. It had already broken. At the first pause in the paddling the mangled
lariat had given way.

In spite of the renewed efforts of the oarsmen, the boat was flying down
the San Juan.

CHAPTER XXV.

When Thurstane perceived that the towline had parted and that the boat was
gliding down the San Juan, he called sharply, "Paddle!"

He was in no alarm as yet. The line, although of rawhide, was switching on
the surface of the rapid current; it seemed easy enough to recover it and
make a new fastening. Passing from the stern to the bow, he knelt down and
dipped one hand in the water, ready to clutch the end of the lariat.

But a boat five feet long and twelve feet broad, especially when made of
canvas on a frame of light sticks, is not handily paddled against swift
water; and the Buchanan (as the voyagers afterward named it) not only
sagged awkwardly, but showed a strong tendency to whirl around like an
egg-shell as it was. Moreover, the loose line almost instantly took the
direction of the stream, and swept so rapidly shoreward that by the time
Thurstane was in position to seize it, it was rods away.

"Row for the bank," he ordered. But just as he spoke there came a little
noise which was to these three men the crack of doom. The paddle of that
most unskilful navigator, Sweeny, snapped in two, and the broad blade of
it was instantly out of reach. Next the cockle-shell of a boat was
spinning on its keel-less bottom, and whirling broadside on, bow foremost,
stern foremost, any way, down the San Juan.

"Paddle away!" shouted Thurstane to Glover. "Drive her in sh