“Oh, no,” said Sahwah, “let’s call it the Crab, because it travels sort of sidewise.” Hinpoha held out for her name and Sahwah would not yield hers.
“Contest of arms!” cried Nyoda. “Decide the question by a test of physical prowess. Whichever one of you can pole the raft straight across the river and back again without mishap in the shortest time may have the privilege of naming it. Is that fair?”
“It is!” cried all the girls. Hinpoha and Sahwah, dressed in their bathing-suits, prepared for the contest. Hinpoha had the first trial because she had spoken first. Getting onto the raft and seizing the stout pole, she pushed off from the shore. It was difficult to keep the unwieldy craft going toward the opposite bank, because it had a strong inclination to be carried down-stream with the current. Halfway across she grounded on a rock and stood marooned. Sahwah watched the moments tick off on Nyoda’s watch with ill-concealed delight while Hinpoha pushed and strained on the pole to set the raft free. Finally she leaned all her weight, which was no small item, on the pole and shoved with her feet against the raft. It freed itself and glided away under her feet, leaving her clinging to the pole in the middle of the river, while her solid footing of a few moments ago swung into the current and floated off beyond her reach. She looked so comical clinging to the pole, which was fast losing its upright position under her weight, that the girls were unable to help her for laughter, and a minute later she plunged into the river with a mighty splash and swam disgustedly to shore.
“Our new boat will not be called the TORTOISE, it seems,” said Nyoda. “Cheer up, Hinpoha, you have made yourself more immortal by the picture you presented hanging over the water than you would have by naming the raft. As Hinpoha, the Polehanger, you will have your portrait in the Winnebago Hall of Fame. Now then, Sahwah, show her how it should be done.”
Sahwah, ever more skilful in watercraft than Hinpoha, poled the raft neatly across the stream to the opposite shore, paused a moment to see that the feat was properly registered by the judges, and then started back. Unlike Hinpoha, who forged blindly ahead, she felt carefully with her pole to locate the points of the rocks and then avoided them. “Here I come,” she hailed, when she was nearly back to the starting point, “on my new raft, the CRAB.” Striking a heroic attitude with arms crossed and one foot out ahead of the other she stepped to the edge of the raft, when the floating floor tipped under her weight and she lost her balance and fell head first into the water. The raft, released from her guiding hand, went off with the current as it had done before. The look of stupefaction on her face when she came up out of the water was even funnier than the sight of Hinpoha marooned on the pole.
“The raft will not be named the CRAB, either, it seems,” said Nyoda.
“I don’t care what it’s called,” said Sahwah, her temper up, “I’m going to pole that raft across the river.”
“So’m I,” said Hinpoha, her eye gleaming with resolution.
“Let’s do it together,” said Sahwah.
Thanks to Sahwah’s skill with the pole and Hinpoha’s judicious balancing of the raft at the right places, they made the trip over and back without mishap.