g. Then the children crowded round him, and Clam said,
"Come home with us. Show your bow to the other children."

"How can I get there?" Thorn asked.

"Swim across the river, then walk."

"I cannot swim."

The children laughed and thought that very strange, but Periwinkle
said, "Well, we will push you on the raft."

"Yes, yes!" cried the other children.

So Thorn told his grandfather that he was going home with the shell
mound people. And when the men had bought their axes, the children all
ran down to the river together.

Some of the boys quickly tied a wild grape vine to the raft. Then they
cried, "Here we go!" and dived into the river and swam away, pulling
the raft. Laughing and shouting and splashing, the others jumped in
and followed. They came up alongside the raft and pushed it with one
hand and swam with the other.

[Illustration: They dived into the river and swam away, pulling the
raft]

Before long, all the children on one side of the raft shouted and waved
their arms and dived. They came up on the other side of the raft.
Then the rest of the children dived and came up far ahead of the raft.
Thorn looked on in wonder. As they came near the other bank, the girls
pulled up the yellow water lilies and tied them in their wet hair.

The children walked along beside the river for a while. Hippopotamuses
lay floating in the water, asleep in the sun. The children gave a
great shout and woke up the river horses, as they called them. The
animals opened their big mouths;--and the snorts, grunts, yawns! Thorn
had never heard anything like it.

"What big teeth they have," he said.

"Yes, and just to eat grass," said another boy.

And soon some of the great rough things dived and came up with their
mouths full of reeds.

A little farther along, Thorn saw beavers at work on the bank. They
were carrying birch branches down to their homes beneath the little
round mounds. And once in a while a water rat or snake swam across the
river. Farther on, a flock of white swans floated. Their wings were
raised a little, and their shadows floated with them.

[Illustration: Flock of white swans]

The children stopped to watch them.

"Pretty!" they said. "Swans and shadow swans!"

So laughing and playing and seeing strange and beautiful things, Thorn
walked a long way with the children. At last, far off, he saw a long
purple line.

"That is the sea," Periwinkle told him.

When they came to it,