“I was just thinking that either Barrows is a fool or takes us for brainless idiots. The idea of telling us that there was nothing in the camp with which a boat could be calked, and there are only some hundreds of square miles in the state just full of the finest thing in the world. Nothing more than the pitch on the pine trees all around us.”
“I noticed it this morning when the manager remarked about it, but thought it just as well to keep my knowledge to myself,” remarked Dick.
“All right, then, you fellows set to work with your knives and dig a lot of those pitch lumps off the trees and then start a fire and melt it in your drinking cup. It will spoil the cup, but we can easily get another one,” directed Garry.
The boys immediately set about doing his bidding, and as they worked, Garry got out his knapsack and proceeded to rummage through it for the linen cord and the shoemaker’s wax. Having found them, he set to work to wax the cord thoroughly, making it less likely to shrink. Next he examined the broken rib of the canoe, and determined how much of the birch branch he would need to repair it. He took his knife and shaved a long diagonal slant on the piece of rib in the canoe, then matched the slant on the piece of branch. Having fixed them so they would fit, he took a piece of fishing line and wound it carefully around the joint, starting several inches above where the two pieces joined, and continuing for several inches onto the firm wood beyond the spot where the repair was made. This is called “splicing.” Most boys have spliced a fishing pole or a broken bat in much the same way.
The rib having been spliced, the next step was the patching of the hole. Garry got the birch bark, and laid it over the gaping rent in the bottom of the craft, and marked a line around so that it overlapped the hole by about four inches. The extra bark was then trimmed away, and he was ready to sew it on. He took the awl blade of his knife and punched a series of holes around, piercing both the patch and the bark of the canoe. Having done this, he called for the hot pitch and poured it on around the edge of the hole. Then he firmly laid the patch on, and as the pitch cooled it formed a sort of a natural mucilage. Garry had previously waxed one end of the cord so that it would be easy to stick it through the holes, and working swiftly he threaded the cord in. When the job was completed, he reversed his steps, so that the result was a firmly sewn patch.
Nothing else remained to do but to daub hot pitch liberally over the seam on both sides, and calk the edges where the patch was attached to the craft.
“There,” said Garry, as he stepped back and proudly surveyed his handiwork. “That’s a craft that will be as seaworthy, or rather as lakeworthy, if there is such a word, as one could want.”
“Um, let me see,” mused Dick aloud, as he looked over the canoe. “There’s one other quite necessary thing to be done.”
“Well, smarty, what is there to be done,” asked Garry a trifle hotly.
“I was just wondering whether we would rig up a sail or have you a gas engine in your knapsack with which to make this gallant ship navigate?” asked Dick as he burst into laughter, in which he was joined, first by Phil, and a bit later by Garry, when he saw that the joke was on him.