"Football is undoubtedly more dangerous than canoeing," Dick claimed.
"It seems too bad that boys' best sports should be so dangerous, doesn't it?" questioned young Miss Bentley.
"I can't agree with you," Dick answered quietly. "It takes danger, and the ability to meet it, to form a boy's character into a man's."
"Then you believe in being foolhardy, as a matter of training?" asked Laura, with a swift flash of her eyes.
"By no means," Prescott rejoined. "Foolhardy means just what the word implies, and only a fool will be foolhardy. If we had been trying to upset the canoe, as a matter of sport, that would have been the work of young fools."
It was not difficult to locate the spot where the canoe had gone down. The river's current was not swift, and the paddles now floated not very far below the spot where the cherished craft of Dick & Co. had gone down.
"Do you want the services of some expert divers, Mr. Driggs?" asked Dave, turning from a brief chat with Belle Meade.
"Not you boys," retorted the boat builder. "You youngsters have been fooling enough with the river bottom for one day."
"Then how do you expect to get hold of the canoe, sir?" asked
Tom Reade.
"We'll grapple with tackle," replied Driggs, going toward an equipment box that stood on the forward end of the scow. "We'll use the same kind of tackle that we've sometimes dragged the bottom with when looking for drowned people."