wave receded before the boys had time to drown, and left them struggling in a heap on the wet sand. There was no return of the water, and in a few moments the boys were outside of the tent and on the top of the bluff above the river.
"It must have been a tidal wave," said Jim. "Oh, I'd give anything if I was home! The water will come up again, and we'll all be drowned!"
"It was the swell of a steamboat," said Tom. "There's the boat now, just going around that point."
"You're right," said Harry. "It was nothing but the swell of the night-boat. What precious fools we were not to think of it before! To-morrow night we'll pitch the tent about a thousand feet above the water."
"Then there'll be a water-spout or something," said Jim. "We're bound to get wet whatever we do. We only started yesterday, and here we've been wet through three times."
"And Harry has been wet four times, counting
