They preferred walking in place of rowing, Bob declaring that his arms felt as though they were nearly pulled out of their sockets. They made a hasty meal as they were both anxious to get back to the boat and in a little over an hour they were at work again. It was not difficult to pull the boat up on the gently sloping beach until it was far enough out of water to be bailed out.
This was slow work, but it was finally accomplished and once more the Sprite floated as proudly as ever on the surface. A careful examination disclosed that Jack had been right. Except for a little paint rubbed off the side the hull was uninjured.
“Do you suppose the water has injured the motor?” Jack asked.
“Don’t see why it should. But we’ll have to overhaul it and get it thoroughly dried, before we can be sure.”
“Well, let’s get those barrels aboard and tow her up to the cottage.”
It took them the rest of the afternoon to clean and dry the motor but they were well rewarded for their work when they found that it ran as smoothly as ever.
“Now a little paint and she’ll be as good as new,” Bob declared after they had taken a short run down the lake to make sure that all was right. “But we’ll let that go till to-morrow. Suppose you see if you can get a mess of perch while I mix a batch of biscuit.”
“How’d you guess it?” Jack laughed as he ran up to the cottage for his rod.
Catching fish was, as Jack often said, the best thing he did, and by the time Bob had his biscuits in the oven he had six big perch sizzling in the frying pan.
“These are pretty near as good as trout,” he declared a little later as he reached for his third.