“Phil, you’re the handy man with the knife, what say to a couple of paddles?” asked Garry after the laughter had subsided.
“Have ’em for you in an hour. That’s quick work, however, and I won’t promise you a very handsome product.”
“We won’t bother about looks as long as they will propel the canoe through the water. That remark of Dick’s about the sail, although it was intended to be humorous, isn’t such a bad idea either, only there is no way that I can think of right now to make a sail. We’ll browse around the camp when we get back and see if we can dig up a bit of canvas and make one of those lateen sails, you know those triangular shaped affairs such as the boats in the Mediterranean use,” said Garry.
While he was talking, Phil had already set to work to make a pair of paddles. “Now you chaps watch me, and after I have fixed one with the axe, or as much as one can do with an axe blade, I’ll get to work with the knife,” he said.
Phil selected spruce about five inches in diameter and felled it to the ground.
“I hate to spoil a perfectly good tree, but in this case certainly necessity knows no law.”
He chopped off two sections a little over five feet in length, and then proceeded to hew one swiftly into a board. This took some little time, despite the fact that he worked at top speed every moment. His last work with the axe was to fashion very crudely the handle.
“Now I am going to whittle just the top and a place where the hand will come in contact with the neck or shaft of the paddle. To try and smooth it up would take too long, and all that really needs to be smooth are the places where we will have to hold it. If it was left rough we would soon accumulate a crop of blisters. While I am whittling, you chaps can fashion that other section into form as I did.”
After he had whittled enough, Phil sprang to his feet and said, “If I am not mistaken, I saw an old bottle near the remains of a campfire, and that will be just what I want.” He sped away to where he had seen the vestiges of some fisherman’s fire, and soon found what he required. He smashed this against a stone, and with the fragments scraped the spots he had whittled smooth and free from lumps.
The second paddle was not long in the making, but the entire job had taken well over three hours. “We have about three hours before it is time to eat, and we might as well put our canoe to the test, and see if it works,” announced Dick.