"We should have had sense enough to know the tide is stronger here than
in the creek," they all said.

"What's the difference?" Dorry Benton said,

"We're stuck on the flats, that's all. Now we don't have to bother to
tie her. When the tide changes, we'll float off and go on upstream all
right. We're just as well off as if we were tied up in the channel."

Well, I guess he was right except for what happened pretty soon. So we
settled down to wait for the tide to go down and change. After a while
we began to see the flats all around us and there wasn't any water near
us at all--only the water in the channel away over near the west shore.
We were high and dry and there wasn't any way for a fellow to get away
from where we were, because he couldn't swim and he'd only sink in the
mud, if he tried to walk it.

Well, while we were sitting around trying to figure out how long it
would be before the water would go down and then come up enough to
carry us off, Doc Carson said, "Listen!" and we heard the chug of a
motor boat quite a long way off.

It was getting dark good and fast now, and there was a pretty wide
stretch of flats between us and the channel. Pretty soon we could hear
voices--all thin, sort of, as if they came from a long way off. That's
the way it is on the water.

"She's coming down Dutch Creek," one of the fellows said. After a while
another fellow said he thought it was Jake Holden. Then another one said
it wasn't.