Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII.

WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted.
Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that!
But it warn't no time to be sentimentering. We'd GOT
to find that boat now -- had to have it for ourselves.
So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard
side, and slow work it was, too -- seemed a week be-
fore we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim
said he didn't believe he could go any further -- so
scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said.
But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we
are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We
struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and
then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging
on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight
was in the water. When we got pretty close to the
cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! I
could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In
another second I would a been aboard of her, but just
then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head
out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought
I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:

"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!"

He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then
got in himself and set down. It was Packard. Then
Bill HE come out and got in. Packard says, in a low
voice:

"All ready -- shove off!"

I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so
weak. But Bill says:

"Hold on -- 'd you go through him?"

"No. Didn't you?"

"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet."

"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and
leave money."

"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?"

"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway.
Come along."

So they got out and went in.

The door slammed to because it was on the careened
side; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim
come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut
the rope, and away we went!

We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor
whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding
swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-
box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more
we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the
darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we
was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards down-
stream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the
texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that
the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning
to understand that they was in just as much trouble now
as Jim Turner was.

Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after
our raft. Now was the