“After I got back here to the house I began to worry about you chaps,” said Mr. Carey, “and pretty soon I took the field-glasses and went down to the pier. From there I could see you pretty well, but those canoes looked mighty small, just the same! I happened to have the glasses on the nearest canoe when the accident happened. I saw Speede stand up and then stumble and go over. The glasses made it look so near that I yelled like sixty. Then when I’d found the place again the canoe was drifting along bottom upward and there were two fellows in the water. Well, I knew they’d never make the canoe in that wind, so I shouted for Mr. Merrill here and Barry, my skipper, and we had the skiff out in no time. But it was a long ways out to where you were, and I thought we’d never get there. And when we did get alongside I thought we were too late. Two deader-looking live men I never saw in my life! The waves were washing all over you two, Tilford, and you seemed on the point of sinking. But you had hold of Speede good and hard; it was all we could do to loosen your grasp on his arm, and I guess he’ll have a black-and-blue bracelet there for some time. Hethington and Ferris got there in the canoe a moment later and helped us get you two into the boat. From the looks of them I guess they’d done some tall paddling.” “We did,” said Bob grimly. “It was Tommy who discovered you had gone. He looked around when we were pretty near land and let out a yell. Then we turned the canoe and started back. It was like pulling yourself up by your shoe-straps. The wind was almost on our quarter and we could just see that we were moving. Tommy paddled like an Indian. And all the time he kept yelling to me to hurry up, just as though I wasn’t breaking my back at every stroke! As it was, though, he pulled me around several times; I was in the bow. I thought we’d never get to the canoe; we could see it now and then over the waves; and when we did we found you two weren’t there, and had to start off on another course.” “Tommy was like a crazy man; kept crying that you were both drowned and that it was our fault for leaving you. And I was--was pretty well worried myself. Then we saw Mr. Carey’s boat, though we didn’t know then who was in it, and we made toward it, and pretty soon we saw you two chaps floating around in the water like a couple of logs. And Tommy was for jumping over and swimming to you. Nel, you certainly had the pluck. If it hadn’t been for you Dan would have drowned before we could have turned around or Mr. Carey could have started out there.” “But I don’t understand about Dan,” said Nelson. “He can swim like a fish. I never thought that anything was the matter with him until I looked back and couldn’t see him.”