he replied. "Why, two big rocks just
grazed me and an arrow struck right between my feet and I don't know how
many swished by me. They simply made a pincushion of the water around
me."

"I'm the real hero," grinned Tom, sarcastically, "because I got wounded.
It was a hard bump too."

"It's lucky that you had a roof over you," I remarked.

"You were just as lucky," he retorted.

"All hands and the cook repair ship," commanded Jim. "We might just as
well get the surplus stones overboard. We don't need so much ballast."

There must have been eight stones of various sizes, but mostly round.
The largest was about eight inches in diameter. The eight pounder, Jim
called it.

"It made the old boat shiver when that landed," remarked Jim. "It's the
only one that broke the deck."

It had embedded itself in the planking, and when he yanked it out we
could see through to the water underneath. The other stones had left bad
dents and bruises on the three half-inch planking, but none had gone
through except the eight-inch shell above referred to.

"Lucky we brought those extra boards along," said Jim. "We will soon fix
up that hole in her bow."

"And put a new roof on the cabin," I pleaded, "that's up to Tom because
the stone that broke it hit him on the leg."

"You've got a logical mind, haven't you?" sneered Tom. "It wasn' my
fault that the coon Indian threw the rock that did the smashing."

"Don't go to arguing, Tom," said Jim, "but get to work; Jo is just
guying you, Tom," he concluded.

It sounded like a carpenter shop set up in that grim canyon, for a
while, with the drawn rip of the saw and the ringing of the hammers
driving home the nails.

Every sound was sent bounding and echoing from rock to rock on either
side, until the canyon was like one great clangorous workshop.

In an hour's time we had everything shipshape again. The bow was
repaired, also the hole in the deck and in the cabin roof.

The scars remained upon the deck alongside, but these we were rather
proud of and we felt we had a right, for our boat had proved herself
stanch and strong enough to resist every danger and every attack.

The arrows we had extracted and kept for curiosities. They were of
darker wood than those of the northern tribes we had skirmished with.
They were also tipped with a different variety of stone, with green
streaks running through it.

While Jim and Tom were putting the finishing touches to the job I jumped
ashore a