“I got one barrel out,” he said. Then he waited awhile for breath, and went under again. This time he was gone so long that his comrades feared the worst, with almost no hope for a better result. But they could do nothing. Presently Phil came up, but so exhausted that he could only cling in a feeble way to the edge of the canvas. The boys dragged him into the skiff, and he lay upon its bottom for a time like one almost drowned, which indeed he was. When he had somewhat recovered, Irv called to him:-- “I’m going down next time, Phil. You shan’t brag that you’re a better water-rat than I am.” “No, you mustn’t,” said the boy; “I’ve found out how to do the trick now. But I’ve lost your knife in the shuffle, Constant. Cast the skiff loose and let’s go aboard for another.” The boy was so exhausted that his companions simply forbade him to make another attempt. “You shan’t go down again,” said Irv, “and that’s all there is about it. If you’ve found out how to do the trick, as you say, save my life by explaining it to me, for I’m going down, anyhow.” The boy was too weak to insist. So he explained:-- “Don’t go down on top of the sheet as I did. Dive under it. Find the barrels,--they’re almost exactly in the middle,--and slit the tarpaulin under them so that they can drop through. Oh, let me do it, I’m all right now.” But Irv was overboard with a big butcher knife in his grasp, and the skiff was again securely fastened to its tree. Irv dived three times. On coming up for the third time, he said with his irrepressible vivacity, “One, two, three times and out! Third time’s the charm, you know. I beg to announce that there’s a big slit in the tarpaulin and that the two barrels of triple X family flour are calmly reposing in the mud that underlies _The Last of the Flatboats_.” “Good!” said Phil. “But we must hurry.” And he gave rapid orders for drawing up the canvas on each side of the flatboat. Then he secured some tackle blocks and carried ropes from the two ends of the tarpaulin to the anchor windlass, and set the boys to draw it as tight as possible. Then he went below, and found the water almost up to the level of the gunwales. That is to say, the boat proper, the part that floated all the rest, was very nearly full of water. A few inches more and the craft would have gone down like an iron pot with a hole in it. There was hurried and anxious work at the pumps. At the end of an hour the gauge below showed that the water in the hold had been reduced by an inch or two. “This will never do,” said the young captain. “We can’t keep on pumping like demons day and night till we get to New Orleans. We simply must find the leaks and stop them. The tarpaulin helps very greatly, but it isn’t enough.” “But how?” asked Ed. “First of all cast the flatboat loose and let her float,” said skipper Phil. “It’s daylight now.” “What good will that do?” asked one.