When the people saw Blue
Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was
going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down
to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and pull it up to
the pier. The strongest current set close in around the middle pier, and
the roof would have to pass on one side or the other. That was what Blue
Bob argued out in his mind when he decided that the skiff would never
reach Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could not save him that way,
nothing could save him.

Blue Bob must have had a last name, but none of the little fellows knew
what it was. Everybody called him Blue Bob because he had such a thick,
black beard that when he was just shaved his face looked perfectly blue.
He knew all about the river and its ways, and if it had been of any use
to go out with a boat, he would have gone. That was what all the boys
said, when they followed Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him getting out
on the pier. He was the only person that the watchman had let go on the
bridge for two days.

The water was up within three feet of the floor, and if Jim Leonard's roof
slipped by Blue Bob's guard and passed under the bridge, it would scrape
Jim Leonard off, and that would be the last of him.

All the time the roof was coming nearer the bridge, sometimes slower,
sometimes faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the current; once it
seemed almost to stop, and swayed completely round; then it just darted
forward.

Blue Bob stood on the very point of the pier, where the strong stone-work
divided the current, and held his hooked pole ready to make a clutch at
the roof, whichever side it took. Jim Leonard saw him there, but although
he had been holloing and yelling and crying all the time, now he was
still. He wanted to say, "O Bob, save me!" but he could not make a sound.

It seemed to him that Bob was going to miss him when he made a lunge at
the roof on the right side of the pier; it seemed to him that the roof was
going down the left side; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then it gave
a loud crack and went to pieces, and flung itself away upon the whirling
and dancing flood. At first Jim Leonard thought he had gone with it; but
it was only the rat that tried to run up Blue Bob's pole, and slipped off
into the water; and then somehow Jim was hanging onto Blue Bob's hands and
scrambling onto the bridge.

Blue Bob always said he never saw