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Perrot and one of the new men waded into the water, and laid hold of the gunwales on each side of the bow. Menard himself took the stern. He called to Danton, who stood awkwardly upon the bank, "Take the rope with the men." Guerin made the rope fast and set out ahead, with the other men and Danton close behind. Father Claude rolled up his robe and joined them.
In another instant down came the fall blocks, with one of the hands hanging on to each, the men alighting "gingerly" on the thwarts of the boat in the bow and stern of the little craft, which became immersed almost up to the gunwales with the additional weight.
In fact a flat-boat was there moored by it, it's setting poles lying across the gunwales. Above the town the stream was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned all ways in the soggy soil; the absence of a plank here and there in the flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk an offense not necessary to be prohibited by law.
Civilization hell! He would give all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a durned Kanaka! The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales.
Tom at first thought of shifting their head-quarters to the little bay where their boat was drawn up; but on consideration, as it was in an exposed situation, he and Desmond agreed to return to their original camp. They found a sufficient amount of planking to raise the boat's gunwales, and to put a small deck forward and some lockers aft.
"Well, I'm back, and it looks like it was for good and all, but I ain't got no money, and I don't see no way to get any unless I rob somebody. And the law won't let me do that. The trouble is that I'm up to my gunwales in debt." "In debt!" To Miss Pipkin's mind there was no greater calamity in the world than to be in debt. She, too, had suffered a like fate many years ago. "Yes. In bad, too.
Into these were placed stout pegs made of a tree called iron-wood; and, when they were hammered well home, the timbers were as firmly fixed as if they had been nailed with iron. The gunwales, which were very stout, were fixed in a similar manner.
Two fellows I caught and killed that, diving down beneath, tried to slit the skin of the boat out of sight under the water; and Phorenice cared for all those that tried to put a hand on the gunwales. Yes, and she did more than that.
"I will wait me. I just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she soon come now." But she left her "working" attitude and curled like a school-girl in the bow of the canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she had flung across the gunwales. "I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for three moons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries," I remarked.
On every side dark shapes covered the face of the stream like water-bugs, from every side there came the "whoo-sh-st-whoo-sh" of dipping paddles, the little plank and rattle of their shafts against gunwales. They had glided into the midst of a flotilla of canoes travelling at night and in silence. The maid from Grand Portage threw up her head. "In among them," she whispered, "quick!
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