He picked up one oar and felt the depth of the river and could not touch bottom on any side. So Hen stopped rowing. As soon as they both stopped rowing, the boat sagged around with the current and the pull on the trot-line was heavy. I looked up the river and saw Uncle Beeswax was rowing for us and was near enough to hear us. I yelled to him and waved my arms. Hen and Cawl had seen him, too. They made a last effort and took up their oars and rowed hard, but it was no use. Uncle Beeswax bore down on us and came alongside and grasped the gunwale of our skiff. The Romers stopped rowing, too, and that put the full weight of both skiffs, with the whole current behind them, on the trot-line and she parted as easy as you would break a rotten thread. “What’s the matter?” Uncle Beeswax asked. The skiffs were floating down-river as easy as you please. “Nothing,” Jibby said. “These Romers wanted to come along and the skiff did not want them to.” “Neither do I; I don’t like ’em, hoof nor hide,” said Uncle Beeswax, who was plain-spoken enough when he wanted to be. “Wampus and Tad and Skippy are waiting by the sycamore,” Jibby said. “Maybe you’d better go on and get the grapes, Uncle Beeswax, and we’ll see if we can row this skiff home. It may be willing to go across the river one way if it isn’t willing to go the other.” The two Romers scowled a lot at this, but they took to the oars. They did not bother to row us back to our mud cove. They rowed across the easiest way, and that landed us down near the end of Birch Island, and they got out there. They did not say a word. As long as we could see them, as we rowed back across the river to the sycamore tree, they were standing there talking to each other--trying to make up their minds whether they believed in magic or not, I guess. Well, Uncle Beeswax got his wild grapes and, after we got home, Jibby reeled in his trot-line. He had lost most of his hooks, but he did not mind that; he had kept the Romers from doing Uncle Beeswax out of his grapes. “Jibby,” Wampus asked, when I had told him and Skippy and Tad about the screw eyes and the trot-line and all, “how on earth did you ever think of putting the screw eyes in the keel of the skiff and running the trot-line through them?” “Well, I’ll explain it,” Jibby Jones said. “I had the screw eyes....” “Yes.” “And I had the trot-line....” “Yes.” “And I had the skiff....” “Yes.” “Well, what else could anybody do with a couple of screw eyes and a trot-line and a skiff?” Jibby asked. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do with them, so I did that. But I’m sorry for one thing. “The feather,” Jibby said. “That crow feather was wasted. I couldn’t think of any way to use it. I tried, but I couldn’t.” CHAPTER XVII GRAINS OF SAND