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A man like myself can live in the backwoods, a hundred miles from a decent sized inland lake and much further from the sea coast, and yet be an enthusiastic canoeist. For instance. Last July I made my preparations for a canoe cruise and spun out with as little delay as possible.
Somehow it had a strange, elusive way of seeming to be in one place and then appearing in another. The canoeist grew hot, and panting with his efforts. The perspiration stood out on his round, rosy face, and the curls on his forehead became wet. He flung off his hat, and redoubled his efforts. He bent his head to his task, as his paddle bumped and splashed its way into the water.
In twelve miles of tortuous windings there appeared but one sign of human life a little cabin on a ridge of upland among the fringe of marshes that bordered on Alligator Lake. It was cheering to a lonely canoeist to see this house, and the clearing around it with the season's crop of corn in stacks dotting the field.
"She's a star canoeist," declared Jack, "and I should like to be better acquainted with her." "Can you talk with your fingers?" asked Belle. "I know a little of the sign language, but I would not be too sure that I could carry on a conversation." "But you could introduce one," insisted Jack, "and once she knew I wanted to know her I might depend upon true love to make known all the rest." "Here!
The canoe being water-logged, settled below the surface, the high points of the ends occasionally emerging from the water. Other heavy seas followed the first, one of which striking me as high as my head and shoulders, turned both the canoe and canoeist upside-down. Kicking myself free of the canvas deck, I struck out from under the shell, and quickly rose to the surface.
Whenever a steamer or tugboat passed me, it crowded the canoe close to the bank; but these vessels travel along the canal at so slow a rate, that no trouble is experienced by the canoeist from the disturbance caused by their revolving screws. Freedmen, poling flats loaded with shingles or frame stuff, roared out their merry songs as they passed.
From the great city it was navigable by power craft as far as Bridgeboro and even above at full tide, but a mile or two above the boys' home town it narrowed to a mere creek, winding its erratic way through a beautiful country where intertwined and overarching boughs formed dim tunnels through which the canoeist passed with no sound but the swishing of his own paddle.
Browned by years of exposure to the beach sun, charmingly modelled, and with the grace and freedom of limb of the surf-board rider and canoeist, she has no consciousness of guilt in her emergence dripping from the sea, in her lying in the breeze upon the sand, nor in her walks to and from her bungalow nearby. And she refuses to be censored.
Get hold of a club as soon as you get down the hill. If we only had some more guns! There's only the two revolvers and Cork and I'll need those to put up a front. We'll join you as fast as possible if you get into trouble. Miss Lawson is an expert canoeist and the river is not difficult; so she'll be all right. Stick with Svenson, Jimmy."
We worked night and day at these canoes, keeping a big fire at night and changing off to keep the axes busy. This canoe we made twenty-five or thirty feet long, and when completed they made me captain of it and into it loaded the most valuable things, such as provisions, ammunition, and cooking utensils. I had to take the lead for I was the only skillful canoeist in the party.
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