"Pooh! nonsense; that's all rubbish, you know," interrupted Phil, patting Dick on the back, "I should have cut at the brute just the same, if thou hadst not been there. And now, if you feel all right again, let us get the canoe out and see what she looks like; a nice mess he will have made of her, I expect, making his lair in her; with a murrain on him!" "You have put something worse than a murrain on him, or I am no judge," laughed Dick, a trifle hysterically. "The brute will certainly die before morning. Now, then, are you ready? Then--lift!" With some difficulty they at length extricated the canoe from her hiding-place, to find, a good deal to their surprise, that, apart from two broken paddles, the craft was very little the worse for having been made the lair of a snake so big that he must have practically filled her from end to end. Luckily the mast, yard, and sail had been placed in the bottom of her and so had not been broken, although almost the whole of the boa's ponderous weight must have rested upon them. So when presently they put her into the water, they were rejoiced to find that although she had been lying dry for three months, so completely had she been shielded from the sun's rays that her hull was still intact and that she leaked not a drop. This was far better than they had dared to hope for, so, stepping into her, appropriating the paddles of the other craft, and leaving the latter moored to the bank, they joyfully shoved off, and three minutes later were in the main stream, with the canoe's head pointed up the river. Meanwhile, the storm still raged as furiously as ever, the flashes of lightning were incessant, the rolling of the thunder was continuous and deafening, and the northerly wind was blowing so fiercely that the surface of the stream was whipped into small, foam-capped waves. But they were not high enough to imperil the safety of the canoe, moreover the wind that roared so savagely aloft among the tree-tops and stripped off the dried leaves and rotten branches in blinding showers was a fair wind for the fugitives, so they stepped their mast, close-reefed their sail, and were presently foaming up the river in midstream--where, although they had a strong current to contend with, they were at least safe from the branches that flew hurtling through the air--as fast as a horse could trot.