They did pull, too. Out there in the middle of the river, with the current rushing the water past the skiff and the skiff pointed halfway upstream and the shores a good distance away, no one can tell whether a skiff is moving much or not. Those two Romers buckled down hard and strained every muscle and did their level best. They got madder and madder and scolded each other, and the boat hardly moved an inch at a stroke. They kept looking over their shoulders at the Buffalo Island shore and simply humped their backs, but the shore did not seem to come any nearer. They rowed harder than I ever saw any one row outside of a race. They made the oars bend. Then they came to the end of the trot-line, where it dipped down to the big anchor rock and the boat did not move at all. And, away up the river, I saw a black speck that I was pretty sure must be Uncle Beeswax rowing down. Cawl Romer rested on his oars a minute. “What does this mean, Jones?” he asked Jibby, and he was mighty mad. “You can’t fool me. There is no such thing as magic. What’s the matter with this boat?” “It don’t seem to go, somehow,” Jibby said. “He’s put a spell on it, that’s what he’s done,” Hen Romer said. “You can’t fool _me_! I never saw a boat yet that I couldn’t row _some_. He’s magicked us, Cawl.” Cawl took up his oars and began to row, but he looked worried. “I don’t believe in magic,” he said, but he did not say it as if he meant it. “How could he put a spell on a boat? He couldn’t do it.” “I don’t know what a fellow with a nose like that can do,” Hen said, and he said it as if he did mean it. “I didn’t like his looks the first time I saw him, and I told you so. I said to keep away from him. And don’t you try to tell me there isn’t magic. You just remember Uncle Harris and the colored conjure woman!” Well, I didn’t know what he meant by his Uncle Harris and the conjure woman, but I guess Cawl did, for he looked uneasy. “You be still!” he said. Then he turned to me. “Did he put magic on this boat?” he asked. “How do I know?” I asked. “He was doing something with a feather and some sticks--that’s all I know.” “Well, he’s magicked us!” Cawl said all of a sudden, dropping his oars. “That’s what he’s done; he’s put a spell on us.”