Breakfast over, the quartette donned their blue flannels and sauntered down to the shore, followed by a curious throng of the inhabitants. (N. B. The throng of inhabitants is seen at the right.)
The Lake, which at an early hour had been placid as a anglican sermon, was, by the time the fleet was ready to start, breaking furiously against the wharf before a northerly breeze and the mariners were glad to launch and stow their canoes under the lee of the railway bridge, and the critical supervision of the local small-boy.
The Quartette.
For six months the four comrades had made preparations for the cruise, but the knowledge which worketh experience worked also calamity, for the stores which were unloaded from steamboats and express cars on the shore of the lake, would have justified each captain of a canoe in chartering a steamer of moderate dimensions as a tender. As such a course would have tended to the destruction of the picturesqueness of the squadron under sail, it was given up without a murmur, so the quartette, each man for himself, proceeded to the exasperating duty of deciding what he best could spare and return. The Statesman decided against carrying a tent, a tin pail, a couple of hundred weight of canned goods, a life-preserver, a Bible and a looking-glass which he had brought with him, but retained a double-barrelled gun, a twenty-pound bag of duck-shot and a volume of Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy."
The Local Small Boy.
"If your boat springs a leak, no earthly power can save her, with such a cargo," said the Editor.