“You should know, sir; you live here.”
“But I never had any occasion to know or to care,” smiled the visitor.
Rob smiled also. “Well, sir, according to Patrick Gass——”
“I never heard of him——”
“——who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it’s about sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don’t figure it quite sixteen hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chart does.”
“Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that’s—how many miles a day?”
“Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn’t quite make it. We ran against a good many things.”
“And broke all known and existing records at that, I’ll bet a hat! How on earth!”
“Well, you see, sir,” Rob went on, politely, “we’ve rigged a double outboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They’re specially made for us and they’re powerful kickers. In fair water and all going good, they’ll do six and eight an hour, with auxiliary sail; and we traveled ten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn’t always what you’d call fair water.”