e carried
oarsmen of our day to many a victory. Moreover, they had the inducement
not merely of a prize, but of life itself, to row and to row hard. They
had rolled up their sleeves, and the mighty muscles on those arms of
woven steel rose and fell as they sent the boat swiftly with the silver
current of the Susquehanna.

Mary Newton still lay on the bottom of the boat. The children had cried
out in fright once or twice at the sound of the firing, but she and
Paul bad soothed them and kept them down. Somehow Mary Newton had become
possessed of a great faith. She noticed the skill, speed, and success
with which the five always worked, and, so long given up to despair,
she now went to the other extreme. With such friends as these coming
suddenly out of the void, everything must succeed. She had no doubt of
it, but lay peacefully on the bottom of the boat, not at all disturbed
by the sound of the shots.

Paul and Sol after a while relieved Long Jim and Tom at the oars. The
Iroquois thought it a chance to creep up again, but they were driven
back by a third bullet, and once more kept their distance. Shif'less
Sol, while he pulled as powerfully as Tom Ross, whose place he had
taken, nevertheless was not silent.

"I'd like to know the feelin's o' Braxton Wyatt an' that feller Butler,"
he said. "Must be powerful tantalizin' to them to see us here, almost
where they could stretch out their hands an' put 'em on us. Like reachn'
fur ripe, rich fruit, an' failin' to git it by half a finger's length."

"They are certainly not pleased," said Henry, "but this must end some
way or other, you know."

"I say so, too, now that I'm a-rowin'," rejoined the shiftless one,
"but when my turn at the oars is finished I wouldn't care. Ez I've said
more'n once before, floatin' down a river with somebody else pullin' at
the oars is the life jest suited to me."

Henry looked up. "A summer thunderstorm is coming," he said, "and from
the look of things it's going to be pretty black. Then's when we must
dodge 'em."

He was a good weather prophet. In a half hour the sky began to darken
rapidly. There was a great deal of thunder and lightning, but when
the rain came the air was almost as dark as night. Mary Newton and her
children were covered as much as possible with the blankets, and then
they swung the boat rapidly toward the eastern shore. They had already
lost sight of their pursuers in the darkness, and as they coasted along
the shore the