Charge after charge was set off, and countless hundreds of fish were
stunned or killed by the terrific force of the explosive, but no
body of a hapless sixteen-year-old boy rewarded the anxious
searchers. Up and down the river combed the dynamiters, and glare
and crash rent the night for a mile down the stream. It began to
look as if other means would have to be resorted to--the saddest of
all, perhaps--time. Sometime, somewhere, after days or even weeks,
ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred miles down the river, a sodden,
unrecognizable body would be washed up on sand-bar or mud-bank. It
was a sickening thought.

"Have all the river towns been telegraphed?" asked a bystander, of
the mayor. A nod of the head was his only answer.

"We may as well go home," was the final reluctant verdict. "We can
come back in the morning." Mr. Fulton alone refused to abandon the
search, and Mr. Aikens kindly offered to bear him company till
daybreak brought others to take his place. When all had gone save
these two and the three boys, Jerry approached and tried to draw Mr.
Aikens aside.

"Do you suppose," he began with a kind of despairing eagerness,
"that he could have stayed in the boat?"

Aikens shook his head. "Not a chance in the world," he declared.

"But I thought----" began Jerry, to be interrupted by Mr. Aikens,
who finally contented himself with merely repeating: