The Forlorn Hope

It was August. "Old Turtle-back" was showing up at the diggin's and the river would reach low water-mark with less than half a foot.

Pole in hand, big John Johnson of the crew stood on the rocking raft anchored below The Big Mallard and opposite the rock where the boat had sunk and smiled his solemn smile at Bruce.

"Don't know but what we ought to name her and break a bottle of ketchup over the bow of this here craft a'fore we la'nch her."

"The Forlorn Hope, The Last Chance, or something appropriate like that," Bruce suggested, although there was too much truth in the jest for him to smile. This attempt to recover the sunken boat was literally that. If it was gone, he was done. His work, all that he had been through, was wasted effort; the whole an expensive fiasco proving that the majority are sometimes right.

The suspense which Bruce had been under for more than two months would soon be ended one way or the other. Day and night it seemed to him he had thought of little else than the fate of the sunken boat. His brain was tired with conjecturing as to what had happened to her when the water had reached its flood. Had the force of it shoved her into deeper water? Had the sand which the water carried at that period filled and covered her? Had the current wrenched her to pieces and imbedded the machinery deep in the sediment and mud?