They set out courageously, keeping close to the bank of the river and scanning every eddy and backwater as they moved along. For this cause their progress was slow, and it was nearly or quite noon when they came to a quiet reach in the river, a placid pond with great trees overhanging its margins and wide stretches of reeds and bulrushes growing in the shallows. And on the opposite side of the pond-like expanse and apparently grounded among the bulrushes they saw their canoe. It was bottom side up with care, and on the wrong side of the river; also they knew that its lading, if any of this had survived the runaway flight, must be soaked and sodden. But the triumphant fact remained—the canoe was found.
XII
IN SEARCH OF AN ANCESTOR
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Prime broke out in a sardonic laugh.
"That is a heavenly prospect for dinner, supper, breakfast, and dinner all rolled into one, isn't it, now? If there is anything left in the canoe, it's soaked to a pulp—to say nothing of the fact that we can't get to it. How are we going to raft ourselves over there without the axe?"
Lucetta went down to the margin of the pond-like reach and tested its depth with a tossed stone.
"It is deep," she said, "swimming-deep. The shallows must be all on the other side."
"I'll go down-stream a piece and see if there isn't some place where I can wade," Prime offered. But at this she shook her head.