a boat.
She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how she
might make use of it.

She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she could
reach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then. If it was
a dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probably
would have no cutting edge. If it was a pocketknife, it doubtless
would be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless.
With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cutting
edge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.

By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling and
worming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pine
needles. Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that the
object was a razor.

How such a tool came to be dropped by her assailants was more than she
could fathom. She did not try. Working her face closer and closer to
the razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and,
twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the blade
without cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.

Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took both
handle and blade in her mouth, by the middle. Her brain had been
active through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.

Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground.
The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw the
naked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closed
razor in her mouth.

It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there was
not a sucker growing from it. She saw another black oak close at hand,
and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.

Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposed
root. She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she had
browsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.

Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle in
her neck, she contrived, at the risk of slashing her face, to insert
the stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.

This pushed up the blade, and it remained in a half-closed position
like a threatening guillotine. Knowing now that she would not be cut,
she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far
as it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against