ting go, devoted both hands to this man, whom he pulled over into
the water about the same time that Shorty possessed himself of the other
man's pistol and dragged him out of the canoe.

"Hold fast in the center there, Lieutenant," he called out, as he
dropped the pistol into his bosom and took in the situation with a quick
glance. "You two Johnnies hold on to the log like grim death to a dead
nigger, and you won't drown."

He carefully worked himself from the log into the canoe, and then Si did
the same. They had come to a part where the water spread out in a broad
and tolerably calm lake over the valley, but there was a gorge at the
further end through which it was rushing with a roar. Log and canoe were
drifting in that direction, and while the changes were being made the
canoe drifted away from the log.

"Hold on, men," shouted the Lieutenant; "you are certainly not going to
abandon your officer?"

"Certainly not," said Shorty. "How could you imagine such a thing?
But just how to trade you off for this rebel passenger presents
difficulties. If we try to throw him overboard we shall certainly tip
the canoe over. And I'm afraid he's not the man to give up peaceably a
dry seat in the canoe for your berth on the log."

"I order you to come back here at once and take me in that boat," said
the Lieutenant imperatively.

"We are comin' back all right," said Shorty; "but we're not goin' to
let you tip this canoe over for 40 Second Lieutenants. We'll git you out
o' the scrape somehow. Don't fret."

"Hello, thar! Help! Help!" came across the waters in agonized tones,
which at the same time had some thing familiar in them.

"Hello, yourself!" responded Shorty, making out, a little distance away,
a "jo-boat," that is, a rude, clumsy square-bottomed, square-ended sort
of a skiff in which was one man. "What's wanted?"

"I'm out here adrift without no oars," came in the now-distinctly
recognizable voice of Jeff Hackberry. "Won't yo' please tow me ashore?"

"Le's go out there and git him," said Shorty to Si. "We kin put all
these fellers in that jo-boat and save 'em."

A few strokes of their paddles brought them alongside.

"How in the world did you come here, Hackberry," asked Shorty.

"O, that ole woman that I wanted so bad that I couldn't rest till I
got her wuz red-hot t' git rid o' me," whined Hackberry. "She tried
half-a-dozen ways puttin' wild parsnip in my likker, giving me pokeberry
bitters, and so on, but n