Two Knapsacks Part 19

"Vau t-en donc, Bawtiste, depeche twa, trouve deux pet.i.ts bouts de plaunche pour le canot."

Batiste soon returned with two boards.

"Canot 'ave no seat, you placea zem over two ends for seet down," said Pierre, relapsing into English.

Wilkinson a.s.sumed the responsibility of the boards and the fishermen proceeded to the river bank near the bridge to find the canoe. It was long, and, for a dug-out, fairly wide, but ancient and black, and moist at the bottom, owing to an insufficiently caulked crack. Its paddles had seen much service, and presented but little breadth of blade.

"I should like to place these boards," said Wilkinson, as he surveyed first them and then the dug-out; "I should like to place these boards, one across the bow and the other across the stern, but I really cannot decide which is the bow and which is the stern."

"She's a sort of a fore and after, Wilks, like the slip-ferry steamboats. I think, if you could find a bit of chalk or charcoal, and write bow on one plank and stern on the other, it would make her s.h.i.+p-shape and settle the business."

"I have no sympathy, Corry, with makes.h.i.+fts and fact.i.tious devices. I wish to arrive at the true inwardness of this boat. At what end of a boat is the anchor let down?"

"In the _Susan Thomas_ it was pretty near the bow, and I think I've seen yachts riding at anchor that way in Toronto harbour."

"In the time of St. Paul, however, there were four anchors, if I remember aright, cast out of the stern."

"I don't see how the anchor is going to help us. This long Tom Coffin has nothing of the kind."

"You are sadly deficient in observation, Corry, or you would have observed a rope, very much abraded indeed, but still a rope, by which the vessel may be said, even though figuratively, to be anch.o.r.ed to this stake."

"It's you're the clever man, Wilks; education has done wonders for you.

Now, I remember that rope is the painter; that's what The Crew called it on the dingy, and of course it was fastened to the bow."

"But to the stern of the larger vessel."

"Yes, but here there is no larger vessel. If you want one, for argument sake, you'll have to imagine the post to be it. The coffin is bow on to the sh.o.r.e."

"Corry, I insist, if I am to trust myself to this craft, that you call it by some other name."

"Were you ever in anything of the kind before, Wilks?"

"Never."

"Nor I." These simple words had in them a depth of meaning.

A young man came on to the bridge and leaned over the rail, looking at the fishermen. He was respectably clad in a farmer's holiday suit, was tall, strongly built, and with good features that bore unmistakable marks of dissipation. "I'll bet you that's Ben Toner," whispered the lawyer, who was examining the new-found bow prior to depositing his boards.

"Goin' fis.h.i.+n'?" asked the new comer, in a not unpleasant voice.

"Yes," replied Coristine; "we're going in this--what do you call it?"

"Dug-out, and mighty poor at that. Fis.h.i.+n's no good here now. River was a pardise for Trontah folks wunst, but it's clean fished out. I seen fellers go to a ho-ul up thayer," said the supposed Ben, pointing in the opposite direction, "and take out a hull barl-ful afore sundown. 'Taint to be did, not now, wuss luck! Wait to I come down, and I'll haylp you off with that kinew."

The speaker descended, untied the frayed painter, and hauled the dug-out to a point where, the bank being higher, embarkation was more easy. He dissuaded the navigators from sitting on the boards placed over the gunwales, as likely to be, what he called, parlous, and recommended that the boards be placed on the floor of the craft to keep the water off their "paants." The fishermen consented, and sat down safely at each end facing one another, with his a.s.sistance to hold the dug-out steady, the dominie in the bow and the lawyer in the stern. They thanked their ally, bade him good afternoon, and proceeded to paddle. Ben Toner laughed, and cried to Coristine: "I'll lay two to one on you, Mister, for you've got the curnt to haylp you." The dugout, in spite of the schoolmaster's fierce paddling, was moving corkscrew-like in the opposite direction, owing largely to the current, but partly to the superior height of the lawyer, which gave his paddle a longer sweep.

Still, he found progress slow, till a happy thought struck him.

"Wilks, my boy, it's paddling our own canoe we are, but too much that way. We're a house divided against itself, Wilks. Either you must turn round or I must, and, if I do, then you'll be the stern and I the bow."

"I thought there was something wrong, Corry, but the excitement incident on a new sensation absorbed my attention. Of course, I shall move, as it would be very confusing, not to say ridiculous, to invert the relative positions of the boat."

"Then, Wilks dear, wait till I paddle her near the bank, for fear of accidents."

When the bank was reached, the dominie landed, picked up his board and placed it farther back, then sat down gingerly, with his legs spread out before him, and began paddling on the same side as his companion, which zigzagged the frail craft more than ever, and finally brought it to the sh.o.r.e. Ben Toner, who had been laughing at the city innocents, ran down to a point opposite the dug-out, and told them to paddle on opposite sides, giving directions how to steer with one of the emaciated propellers. After that, the course of the vessel was a source of continual self-commendatory remark by the voyageurs.

After a while, they came to a wooden bridge, built upon piles resting in the stream. "This," said the schoolmaster, "is the _Pons sublicius_, like that which Ancus Martius built over the Tiber. Shall we shoot it, Corry, or shall we call a halt and proceed to fish?"

The dug-out b.u.mped on the piles, and the navigators trembled, but Wilkinson, bravely gathering his legs under him and rising to his knees on the board, threw his arms round a pile, when, in spite of Coristine's efforts, the craft slewed round and the stern got under the bridge ahead of the bow.

"Hold on, Wilks," the lawyer cried; "another b.u.mp like that and the old thing'll split in two. Now, then, we'll drop the paddles and slip her along the bridge to the bank. There's a hole under that birch tree there, and some fine young birches that will do for rods back of it.

Doesn't the birch make you feel like England, home and duty, Wilks?"

"The quotation, sir, is incorrect, as usual; it is England, home and beauty."

"Well, that's a beauty of a birch, anyway."

They got ash.o.r.e, and fastened the painter to a sapling on the bank, because it was not long enough to go round a pile. Then they produced their knives, and, proceeding to the place where the young birches grew, cut down two famous rods, to which they attached lines with white and green floats and small hooks with gut attachments. The lobster can was produced, and wriggling worms fixed on the hooks. "A worm at one end and a fool at the other," said the lawyer. "Speak for yourself, sir,"

replied the dominie. The next thing was to get into the canoe, which was safely effected. Then, the question arose, how was she to be moored in the current? Wilkinson suggested a stake driven into the bottom for the deep-sea mooring, and an attachment to the exposed root of the lovely overhanging birch for that to landward. So Coristine sprang ash.o.r.e, cut a heavier birch, and trimmed one end to a point. Bringing this on board, he handed it to his companion, and, paddling up stream, brought him opposite the overarching tree. The dominie drove the stake deep into the river mud and pressed it down. The stake was all that could be desired for a deep-sea mooring, and to it the painter was attached.

"What are you going to do about your end of the vessel, Corry?" he asked.

"That's all right," replied the lawyer, who, forthwith, took off coat and waistcoat.

"You are not going to undress, I hope," remarked his friend; "there is a bare possibility that people, even ladies, might be walking this way, sir, and I do not wish to be disgraced."

"Never fear, Wilks, my boy, it's my braces I am after." With this, Coristine took off these articles, and, fastening a b.u.t.ton hole over a rusty nail in the stern, tied the other end about a root of the birch.

The dug-out was securely fastened, so that the current only rocked it a little, causing the lawyer to sing "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep."

Then they sat down on their boards and began fis.h.i.+ng.

They had a very pleasant hour hooking s.h.i.+ners and chub, and an occasional perch that looked at a distance like a trout. The dominie, _apropos_ of his friend's braces, told Alphonse Karr's story of the _bretellier_ in the Jardin des Plantes, and the credulous sceptic who did not believe that a suspender tree existed. He knew that cotton grew on a shrub, and that caoutchouc exuded from a tree, and admitted the possibility of their natural combination, but thought his deceivers had reference to braces with metal attachments.

"That reminds me," said the lawyer, "of a man from Lanark that came into our office asking where he'd find a mining geologist. He had some grey-looking cork and leather wrapped up in a newspaper, and said he had dug them out of the ground where there was lots more of both of them. I told him he had likely come on the remains of an old picnic, and that the leather was the skin of the ham they had taken out to make sandwiches of; but the impudent creature laughed in my face, as if any child doesn't know that leather is the skin of beasts, and cork, of a tree!"

"Nevertheless, Corry, he was no doubt right, and you were wrong in your scepticism. What are called mountain cork and mountain leather are forms of asbestos. They are of no use, unless it be for the lining of safes.

The fibrous asbestos can be made into fire-proof clothes."

"So, old Leather Corks had the laugh on me there! Dad, I'll apologize for sending him to the marines next time he comes in. What a thing it is to have the larnin' like you, Wilks!"

"A mere mineralogical trifle, my dear Corry, nothing more."

"Wilks, do you mind the 'Fisher's Song,' composed by the late Mr.

William Ba.s.s, that's in the 'Complete Angler'? I don't suppose it would scare the fish much. It goes to the tune of 'The Pope, he leads a happy life,' like this:--

Of recreation there is none So free as fis.h.i.+ng is alone; All other pastimes do no less Than mind and body both possess; My hand alone my work can do, So I can fish and study too.

I care not, I, to fish in seas-- Fresh rivers best my mind do please, Whose sweet calm course I contemplate, And seek in life to imitate: In civil bounds I fain would keep, And for my past offences weep.

And when the timorous trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait.