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The air was just chilly enough to render paddling a welcome exercise, and just warm enough to allow intervals of pleasant drifting in the centre of the current when there were no shoals or driftwood to be avoided.
The guides prepared our dinner, which was speedily partaken of, and then we got off on a deer-hunt. The captain started into the woods with the dogs. George Ross and I entered a canoe, the former paddling across the lake to a point that commanded a view of a large portion of this water. We then stepped on dry land, and there patiently awaited the coming developments.
You fired a volley at them, and they retreated. Here the aggression was on your side. At the same time, you say, a war prahu pulled round the point, and approached to within range; when the prahu was close to you she ceased paddling, and hoisted Dutch colours. You desired it to pull for the Gillolo shore, which it did.
On the 24th of September, in 1857, as I was paddling down the Assabet, in this town, I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under some herbage, with something large in its mouth. It stopped near the foot of a hemlock, within a couple of rods of me, and, hastily pawing a hole with its forefeet, dropped its booty into it, covered it up, and retreated part way up the trunk of the tree.
Three were accordingly sent away under the command of Mr Worthy, with whom I went; the pinnace having a six-pounder in the bows, and the others being armed with swivels. We soon came in sight of the canoes, with the schooner at anchor some distance beyond them. A shot from our six-pounder quickly sent them paddling away up the stream.
Sonny Sahib grew quite tired of watching the mud-turtle that was paddling about in a pool of the shallow river among the yellow sands down below, and of counting the camels that were wading across it, carrying their packs and their masters; and yet the Maharajah did not come.
It was a queer experience, this paddling through the long communication trenches, which wound in and out like the Hampton Court maze toward the front line, and the mine craters which made a salient to our right, by a place called the "Tambour."
In each canoe was one of our boys, and they were of course excited at the prospect of this nightly adventure. It seemed so weird to thus embark in this ghostly way and to leave the bright camp fire on the rocks, with the few watchers who remained, Mr Ross being one of them, and to embark in their canoes and go paddling out in the gloom.
One spot only of firm land rose from the water in sixteen miles of paddling from the lake, and passing it, I went flying on with the turbulent stream four miles further, to where rafts of logs blocked the river, and the sandy banks, covered with the upland forest of pines, encroached upon the lowlands. This was Old Dock, with its turpentine distillery smoking and sending out resinous vapors.
Then came a difficulty about a springboard, and soon three people were running backwards and forwards over the meadow, with orders and counter orders and recriminations and apologies. If Margaret wanted to jump from a motor-car, she jumped; if Tibby thought paddling would benefit his ankles, he paddled; if a clerk desired adventure, he took a walk in the dark. But these athletes seemed paralysed.
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