too. Here, let me do it," he added
rather tactlessly, as he closed the little telescope and forced its
smaller end down into the longest of the big glove fingers. "Twist the
top of it and turn the edges over, see?" he added, doing it himself,
"and it's watertight. I can make a watertight stopple for a bottle with
a long strip of paper, but you got to know how to wind it," he added,
with clumsy disregard of his companion's mood. Tom was a hopeless
bungler in some ways.

"Oh, surre, _you_ can do anything," said Archer.

"Maybe it would be best if you held it in your teeth," said Tom
thoughtfully; "unless you can swim with it in your hand."

The compass and the flashlight, which indeed were more susceptible of
damage from the water than the precious glass, were encased in the other
rubber glove, and the two fugitives waded out into the black, silent
river.

Scarcely had their feet left the bottom when the first drop of rain fell
upon Tom's head, and a chill gust of wind caught him and bore him a
yard or two out of his course. He spluttered and looked about for
Archer, but could see nothing in the darkness. He did not want to call
for he knew how far voices carry across the water, and though the spot
was isolated he would take no chances.

It rained hard and the wind, rising to a gale, lashed the black water
into whitecaps. Tom strove vainly to make headway against the storm, but
felt himself carried, willy-nilly, he knew not where. He tried to
distinguish the light beyond the Baden shore, which he had selected for
a beacon, but he could not find it. At last he called to Archer.

"I'm going to turn back," he said; "come on--are you all right?"

If Archer answered his voice was drowned by the wind and rain. For a few
moments Tom struggled against the elements, hoping to regain the
Alsatian shore. His one guiding instinct in all the hubbub was the
conviction that the wind smelled like an east wind and that it ought to
carry him back to the nearer shore. He would have given a good deal for
a glimpse of his precious little compass now.

"Where are you?" he called again. "The light's gone. Let the wind carry
you back--it's east."

He could hear no answer save the mocking wind and the breaking of the
water. This latter sound made him think the shore was not far distant.
But when, after a few moments, he did not feel the bottom, his heart
sank. He had been lost in the woods and as a tenderfoot he had known the
feeling o