The men did not reply immediately. They struck matches on the sleeves of their ulsters and examined me closely, all the while keeping up an animated conversation in tones so low that I did not think Jake could hear it; but subsequent events proved that he heard every word of it, and knew how to profit by the information he gained from it. The course of action he instantly marked out for himself, and which he successfully carried into execution, astonished me beyond measure.
“Say, Jim,” said one of the men, fumbling in his pocket for another match. “This is a cranky looking craft, and I am afraid to trust myself in her. We couldn’t swim ten feet to save our lives, and both these gripsacks have specie enough in them to sink them to the bottom, if she should happen to capsize with us. Say, friend, how wide is the lake at this point?”
“About a mile—mebbe more,” answered Jake.
“Is the water very deep?”
“Well, middlin’ deep. On the day pap ketched a salmon trout here he let out seventy foot of line an’ never teched bottom. I reckon that’s water enough to drown a feller, less’n he’s a tolerable fine swimmer.”
The men evidently thought so too. They held another consultation, and had almost made up their minds that the safest thing they could do would be to stay ashore and walk around the lake, when Jake broke in with—
“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard pap say more’n once. If you are afeared that a boat is too cranky fur you, an’ that she’ll spill you out, all you’ve got to do is to load her down most to the water’s edge, an’ then she’ll go along as stiddy as a rockin’ cheer. The water ain’t over your heads right here, an’ if you don’t like the look of things arter we all get in, why I can bring you back to shore mighty easy.”
One of the men protested that the plan wouldn’t work at all, but his more venturesome companion declared that it was worth trying, adding—
“We can’t manage the canoe, and the boy will have to go. If he takes us over one at a time, we shall lose valuable moments. Jump in, Jim. Where did you want to sit, boy? In the middle, I suppose?”
“I reckon,” replied Jake. “But afore we start, I want to see the color of them five dollars you promised me for takin’ you over.”