We needed a good rest, so we took one. I couldn’t get to sleep, but Mark found no trouble about it at all. He can always eat and sleep. We had been up a long time. It seemed days ago we escaped through the tunnel and began the trip down the Père Marquette, but it was that same morning, and now it was just past noon. While Mark slept I sat around until I was tired of doing nothing, and then I got that Kidnapped book out of the canoe and read it. That made the time pass pretty quickly.

Mark didn’t wake up till nearly three o’clock. As soon as he’d stretched and rubbed his little eyes open we launched our canoe and started again.

I’ve told you how the Père Marquette River turned and wriggled and twisted. It wasted an awful lot of time getting to Lake Michigan, and went about five times as far as there was any need of. Some of the water was more enterprising, though. It wasn’t all satisfied to wander around aimless-like. This ambitious part of the water was always taking short cuts. How can a river shortcut? Easy—just as easy as falling off a log. When the main part of the river would go sweeping off in a big loop the part that was in a hurry would find a low spot and cut right across the base of the loop. It would be just as if you were making a letter “U” with your pencil and, when it was done, drew a line across the opening at the top of it, connecting the two ends. The folks in that country call these short cuts cut-offs.

A cut-off usually is narrow, sometimes not more than six feet wide, and hardly ever more than ten. And how the current in one of them does pelt along! It goes about twice as fast as in the river, and it isn’t going slow in the river, you’d better know. We came to one of them about five o’clock that afternoon. Quite a while before we got to it you could hear the water in it rushing and gurgling.

“Somethin’ ahead,” I says. “Wonder if it’s a rapids.”

“S-sounds more like pourin’ water down a spout,” says Mark.

We went slow so as to be on the safe side. We couldn’t see anything that looked dangerous or exciting; in fact, we couldn’t see anything at all to make the sound. But in a couple of minnits we came opposite a cut in the bank and could see an eddy turning toward it. We edged over. The water was sweeping through just like it was being poured out of a pitcher. It wasn’t a fall, but it was a slant. The water was running down-hill, all right.

“Wonder where it goes?” I asked.

“D-dun’no’,” says Mark. “Looks like it might be f-f-fun. Let’s slide down it.”

That was our first acquaintance with cut-offs.

We turned in the canoe, and all of a sudden the water grabbed it and shot it ahead. We weren’t expecting it, and before we knew it we were twisted almost around and nearly banged against the bank. We dug our paddles in, though, and straightened her up. After that all we had to do was hold her straight—the current did the rest. It was like coasting.

Don’t think we weren’t kept busy, though. There were twists and turns and points and stones and brush-piles. All of these kept getting in the way, and it wasn’t so easy as you may think to keep away from them.

After we’d been shooting along for half an hour we whirled around a bend, and there the stream split in two. I looked one way, and there, across the water, lay a big tree that had fallen. As quick as I could I swung the other way, and, kersmash! we crashed against a sharp snag. You could hear it rip the side of the canoe. We hung there a minnit and then swung toward shore, where the current got a good push at the canoe and came pretty near to upsetting it. I jumped out in the water, which was only above my knees, and hung on. Mark jumped, too, but he hit a deeper spot and got in pretty nearly to his shoulders. It was a tussle for a little while, but at last we got the canoe swung around so she was all right, except for the hole in her side. Then we waded ashore.

The place where we landed was on a sharp point where the cut-off divided. The stream pelted down on either side of us, and disappeared in the woods. The ground we stood on was black, oozy marsh. As soon as you picked up a foot your track filled with water.

“N-nice pickle,” says Mark.

“Fine,” says I.

“Haul her ashore,” says he; and we got a grip on the canoe and dragged it up beside us.

“L-lucky I brought that p-paint and canvas,” says he, all puffed up about himself. Mark liked to have folks appreciate what he did, I can tell you.

“Been luckier,” I says, “if we hadn’t come foolin’ down this offshoot. We’d ’a’ done better to stick to the river.”

“No use f-fussin’ about it now. We’re here!”

That was just like Mark, too. He never worried about what might have happened, but always got to work fixing up what had happened.

We took everything out of the canoe and turned the canoe bottom side up. From there on I wasn’t much good. Mark was the fellow that fixed it. He pounded and whittled and fussed around till it began to get dark.

“Wish we’d b-brought a lantern,” says he.

“So do I,” says I. “I hain’t in love with campin’ out here with no light.”

“I mean to f-f-fix the canoe.”

“Can’t finish it to-night now,” I says. “Better leave it and come look for a place to camp. It don’t look to me as if there was anything but swamp for miles.”

“We’ll have to m-m-make a place to camp,” says he.

“How?” I asked him. “Up in a tree?”

“We might do that,” says he, “if it was n-necessary, but it ain’t.”

“What, then?”

“I dun’no’ yet. Lemme think.”

He leaned up against a big tree and began tugging at his puffy cheek. He always does that when he’s studying. If he runs onto something harder than usual he whittles. You can make up your mind, when you see him whittling, that pretty soon you’ll hear an idea that’s an idea. This time he didn’t seem to think it was necessary to whittle.

I thought of a bed Mark made once before by cutting four forked stakes and laying poles across them, and then cross-pieces, but here the ground was so soggy and oozy we would have had to drive telegraph-poles to get deep enough to hold. If we made stake-beds they’d be sunk down so we laid in the mud in half an hour.

All the time we were smacking mosquitoes. As soon as we came ashore it looked as if they came swarming down to chase us away. If there had been any way for us to go they would have done it, to............