"Non, Monsieur Pierre, nous allons prendre le bateau," answered Wilkinson, with a dignity that his companion envied.
The red-nightcapped host called Baptiste.
"Vau t-en donc, Bawtiste, dépêche twa, trouve deux petits bouts de plaunche pour le canot."
Batiste soon returned with two boards.
"Canot 'ave no seat, you placea zem over two ends for seet down," said Pierre, relapsing into English.
Wilkinson assumed the responsibility of the boards and the fishermen proceeded to the river bank near the bridge to find the canoe. It was long, and, for a dug-out, fairly wide, but ancient and black, and moist at the bottom, owing to an insufficiently caulked crack. Its paddles had seen much service, and presented but little breadth of blade.
"I should like to place these boards," said Wilkinson, as he surveyed first them and then the dug-out; "I should like to place these boards, one across the bow and the other across the stern, but I really cannot decide which is the bow and which is the stern."
"She's a sort of a fore and after, Wilks, like the slip-ferry steamboats. I think, if you could find a bit of chalk or charcoal, and write bow on one plank and stern on the other, it would make her ship-shape and settle the business."
"I have no sympathy, Corry, with makeshifts and factitious devices. I wish to arrive at the true inwardness of this boat. At what end of a boat is the anchor let down?"
"In the Susan Thomas it was pretty near the bow, and I think I've seen yachts riding at anchor that way in Toronto harbour."