He saw an occasional ferry-boat making its slow way across the river, but it was always either too far above him or too far below him for his signals to be noticed, and so the hours dragged on until it was late afternoon, and Winn was again beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.
"I can't spend another night in this wretched boat!" he exclaimed aloud, when he saw that the sun was within an hour of its setting.
"I'll swim the whole width of the river first!" During the day he had passed a number of small islands, but had not cared to attempt a landing on them.

He knew that he would be even worse off on an island than in the skiff, and so he had watched them glide by without giving them any particular thought.

Suddenly it occurred to him that on any one of these islands he might pick up an oar, a paddle, or at least something that would answer in place of these, and from that instant they acquired a new interest.
The next one that he approached was only a tow-head, which is a sand-bar on which has sprung up a thick growth of slender cotton-woods, or other quick-shooting, water-loving trees.
"I might find what I want there as well as on a larger island," thought Winn, "and, at any rate, I'll make a try for it." So when the skiff had drifted as near the tow-head as it seemed likely to, and was rapidly sliding past it, the boy threw off his coat, kicked off his shoes, and, taking one end of the skiff's painter with him, plunged overboard and began to swim towards the desired point.
The distance was not more than a hundred feet, but the current swept him down so much more rapidly than he expected that he was barely able to catch one of the very last of the tow-head saplings and cling to it.
While his own progress was thus checked, that of the skiff was not, and in a second the painter was jerked from his hand.
Exhausted as he was, Winn was on the point of letting go his hold on the sapling and making a desperate effort to overtake the rapidly receding skiff.

Fortunately he had enough practical sense, though this is not generally credited to sixteen-year-old boys, to restrain him from such a rash act.

So he crawled out on the sand beach, and sat there watching what he considered to be his only hope grow smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared.