did Whitefoot. The harder he struggled, the more tired he became,
and the greater was his danger of drowning.

Whitefoot squeaked pitifully. He didn't want to drown. Of course not.
He wanted to live. But unless he could get out of that pail
very soon, he would drown. He knew it. He knew that he couldn't
hold on much longer. He knew that just as soon as he stopped
paddling, he would sink. Already he was so tired from his frantic
efforts to escape that it seemed to him that he couldn't hold out
any longer. But somehow he kept his legs moving, and so kept afloat.

Just why he kept struggling, Whitefoot couldn't have told. It wasn't
because he had any hope. He didn't have the least bit of hope.
He knew now that he couldn't climb the sides of that pail,
and there was no other way of getting out. Still he kept on paddling.
It was the only way to keep from drowning, and though he felt
sure that he had got to drown at last, he just wouldn't until
he actually had to. And all the time Whitefoot squeaked hopelessly,
despairingly, pitifully. He did it without knowing that he did it,
just as he kept paddling round and round.



CHAPTER VIII: The Rescue

When Whitefoot made the heedless jump that landed him in a pail half
filled with sap, no one else was in the little sugar-house.
Whitefoot was quite alone. You see, Farmer Brown and Farmer Brown's
boy were out collecting sap from the trees, and Bowser the Hound was
with them.