"Ready!" replied the Vice, the Purser and the Cook in chorus; the paddles were seized, and the Commodore was giving the command "Shove off!" when the Vice exclaimed,
"Gracious! how could I have forgotten it?" Then he ran to the pile of rejected material and rescued an immense brown paper parcel containing something which seemed to be instinct with every angle and line known to the student of conic sections. Hurriedly stowing it away in his forward compartment, he shoved his boat from the beach.
"What is it?" shouted the fleet.
"It was a present to me from a constituent," roared he, at the top of his lungs, the wind whisking away his words. "That's what it is."
This was accepted as a diplomatic and statesmanlike way of saying "None of your business," so the rest held their peace, and gave themselves to the serious work of making headway against the sea.
'Tis ever thus! Never have any of the Four started on a cruise without having at the very beginning to tax their as yet unaccustomed muscles by paddling straight in the teeth of an adverse gale. Of course the canoes are at their heaviest and must be expected to leak more or less after a fortnight's baking in a box-car. So when all are ready the command paddles round through the draw, points toward a headland three miles off dead to windward, and doggedly settles down to its work. It takes nearly two hours to cover the distance, and the Chrysalids have had to bail at frequent intervals under the protecting care of Red Lakers. The headland is reached at last, however, and then comes the bath for which all have been longing. If any future explorer finds an unaccountable deposit of cinders and scoriæ off that point he may ascribe them, if he likes, to prehistoric volcanic convulsions, but the four voyagers know better.
It was now noon, and a substantial luncheon was followed by a long siesta under the cedars, while lungs accustomed to inhale the de-oxidized atmosphere of the city filled themselves with the first draughts of ozone from the great paradise of spruce which stretches almost unbroken from the Canada line to the Arctic circle. Grand mountain forms rose against the sky, the city was far away; they were free!
The sun lacked but three hours of setting, when the squadron shook off the delicious languor that succeeded its unwonted exertions, bailed out the Chrysalids, now thoroughly soaked, and in a condition which their owners were pleased to consider "tight," wiped up with a sponge the few drops that had penetrated the seams of the Red Lakers, and paddled merrily away toward an island blue in the afternoon haze, on which it had been determined to camp over Sunday. The lake was by this time ashamed of the boisterous welcome it had given to the fleet, and was undergoing a burnishing process preparatory to serving as a mirror for the sunset. By dusk camp was made in a lean-to left by some considerate predecessors. The canoes were anchored in the lee of a shingly point, excepting the Rochefort, which her commander carefully, and for some inscrutable parliamentary reason, anchored to windward, and by nine o'clock all, with one exception, were rolled in their blankets, and sound asleep.
Footnote
[1] The artist begs the authors to explain that this name is the result of a compromise between the friends of two domestic cats "Arabella" and "Methusela," neither of whom would consent to have the boat named exclusively after the other.