"Land o' libberty!" said the Captain, "don't yer know?"
"Why, yes, it floated off. While I was watching the tennis-racquet animals it got loose, somehow—"
"Naturally," observed Captain Bannister, "seein' the tide was risin', an' I don't s'pose yer pulled it up on the sand."
"And the first thing I knew it was quite a distance from the island."
"Couldn't you have swum for it?" I demanded.
"Yes; but I didn't want to get all wet,—I—"
And then we all looked at his soaked clothes, and he laughed with us.
"Somehow, I didn't think of that when you came along," he admitted.
"But don't you really know where the canoe is?"
'Why, it disappeared around that point, just before I saw your boat. I really ought to get it again, because Mr. Skeels—that's the name of the man who owns it—isn't it great? I tried to make up a poem about him as I came down the river, but I couldn't get any farther than: