CHAPTER I
THE RESCUE OF THE PIGS
"Give it up, boys; you're tired, and you've been in the water too longalready. And, besides, I've decided that this job's done."
It was Ed Lowry who spoke. He was lying on the sand under a big sycamoretree that had slid, roots and all, off the river bank above, and nowstood leaning like a drunken man trying to stand upright.
Ed was a tall, slender, and not at all robust boy, with a big head, anda tremendous shock of half-curly hair to make it look bigger.
The four boys whom he addressed had been diving in the river andstruggling with something under the water, but without success. Three ofthem accepted Ed's suggestion, as all of them were accustomed to do,not because he had any particular right to make suggestions to them, butbecause he was so far the moral and intellectual superior of every boyin town, and was always so wise and kindly and just in his decisions,that they had come to regard his word as a sort of law withoutthemselves quite knowing why.
Three of the boys left the river, therefore, shook the water off theirsunburned bodies,--for they had no towels,--and slipped into the looseshirt and cottonade trousers that constituted their sole costume.
The other boy--Ed's younger brother, Philip--was not so ready to acceptsuggestions. In response to Ed's call, he cried out in a sort of mockheroics:--
"Never say die! In the words of the immortal Lawrence, or some otherimmortal who died a long time ago, 'Don't give up the ship!' _I'm_ goingto get that pig if it takes all summer."
The boys all laughed as they threw themselves down upon the sand by Ed.
"Might as well let him alone," said Will Moreraud; "he never will quit."
Meantime Phil had dived three or four times more, each time going downhead first, wrestling with the object as long as he could hold hisbreath, and each time manifestly moving one end or the other of itnearer the shore, and into shallower water, before coming to the surfaceagain.
When he had caught his breath after the third or fourth struggle, hecalled out:--
"I say, boys, it isn't a pig at all, but a good average-sized elephant.'Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,' _I'm_ going to get thatanimal ashore."
"He'll do it, too," said Constant Thiebaud.
"Of course he will," drawled Irving Strong. "It's a way he has. He nevergives up anything. Don't you remember how he stuck to that sum in thearithmetic about that cistern whose idiotic builder had put threedifferent sized pipes to run water into it, and two others of stilldifferent sizes to run water out? He worked three weeks over that thingafter all the rest of us gave it up and got Mrs. Dupont to show us--andhe got it, too."
"Yes, and he can do it now backwards or forwards or standing on hishead," said Constant Thiebaud; "while there isn't another boy here thatcan do it at all."
"Except Ed Lowry," said Irving Strong. "But then, he's different, andknows a whole lot about the higher mathematics, while we're only inalgebra. How is it, Ed? You've been sick so much that I don't believeyou ever did go to school more than a month at a time, and yet you'reahead of all of us."
Just then Phil came up after a long tussle under the water, and thistime stood only a little way from shore where the water was not morethan breast high. He cried:--
"Now I've 'met the enemy and it's ours,' or words to that effect. I'vegot the elephant into three feet of water, but I can't 'personallyconduct' it ashore. Come here, all of you, and help."
The boys quickly dropped out of their clothes, and went to theircomrade's assistance.
"What is the thing, anyhow?" asked Irving Strong.
"I don't know," said Phil. "All I know is that it's got elbows andwrists and all sorts of burs on it, on which I've been skinning my shinsfor the last half hour; and that it is heavier than one of yourcompositions, Irv."
The thing was in water so shallow that all the boys at once could get atit merely by bending forward and plunging their heads and shouldersunder the surface. But it was so unwieldy that it took all five ofthem--for Ed too had joined, as he always did when there was need ofhim--fully ten minutes to bring it out upon shore.
"I say, boys," said Ed, "this is a big find. It's that ferry-boat shaftthe iron man told us about, and you remember we are to have fiftydollars for it."
"Then hurrah for Phil Lowry's obstinate pertinacity!" said IrvingStrong. "That's what Mrs. Dupont called it when she bracketed his nameand mine together on the bulletin-board as 'Irreclaimable whisperers.'Phil, you may be irreclaimable, but you've proved that this shaftisn't."
It was just below the little old town of Vevay on the Ohio River, whereSwiss names and some few Swiss customs still survived long after theSwiss settlers of 1805 were buried. To be exact, it was at "The Point,"where all Vevay boys went for their swimming because it lay a littlebeyond the town limits, and so Joe Peelman, the marshal, could notarrest them for swimming there in daylight without their clothes.
During the high water of the preceding winter a barge loaded withpig-iron had broken in two there and sunk. The strong currentquickly carried away what was left of the wrecked barge,--which hadbeen scarcely more than a great oblong box,--leaving the iron to beundermined by the water and to sink into the sand and gravel of thebottom.
The agent who came to look after matters quickly decided that at such aplace very little of the cargo could ever be recovered--not enough tojustify him in sending a wrecking force there. He thought, too, that bythe time of summer low water--for the Ohio runs very low indeed in Julyand August--the iron would have settled and scattered too much to beworth searching for.
But Phil Lowry not only never liked to give up, he never liked to seeanybody else give up. So what he looked upon as the iron man's weaksurrender gave him an idea. He said to the agent:--
"That iron's where we boys go swimming in summer-time. If we get any ofit out during the low water, can we have it? Is it 'finder's keeper'?"
"Well, no," said the man, hesitating. "But I'll tell you what I'll do.If you boys get out any considerable quantity,--say fifty tons ormore,--enough to justify me in sending a steamboat after it, I'll payyou three dollars a ton salvage for it."
So the boys formed a salvage copartnership. Long-headed Ed Lowry, inorder to avoid misunderstandings, drew up an agreement, and the iron mansigned it. It gave the boys entire charge of the wreck, and bound theowner to pay for recovered iron as he had proposed. Just before signingthe paper the agent remembered the ferry-boat wheel shaft, which hadbeen a part of the cargo; and as it was a valuable piece of property,which he particularly wanted to recover, he added a clause to thecontract agreeing to pay an additional fifty dollars for it, if by anyremote chance it should be saved.
During the summer the boys had been specially favored by circumstances.The river had gone down much earlier that year than usual, and itwent at last much lower than it had done for many years past. As aconsequence they had prospered well in their enterprise. Their pile ofiron "pigs" on the shore when the shaft was found amounted to threehundred tons, and the agent was to arrive by the packet that night topay for it and take possession. This was, therefore, their last day'swork, and thanks to Philip Lowry's "obstinate pertinacity" it was themost profitable day's work of them all.
The Last of the Flatboats Page 2