And Walter added: “You’d better go—he’s not completely clothed.”
“Well, breakfast’s ready,” I said, and I turned, and fell splashing behind the upper dam, and as I sat there and mourned that the river had got into my boot I heard Walter’s accents, speaking to Bob.
“That’s enough for scientific research. Now get your clothes on, cub,” he said, and with that rose a shriek.
“Oh, gosh! My clothes! Walter—save ’em! Down on the beach—Oh, Holy Ike! The water’s covered ’em—they’re gone!”
There was a dramatic silence. Splashing and crackling of underbrush, and for a minute nothing more. Then came an outcry, a mixture of suffering and laughter. Accustomed as they were to the pandemonium of “M’sieur” and “M’sieur Bob,” it brought the guides—the two light figures raced down the bank past me as I sat. I did not go. I guessed what had happened, and I doubted my welcome.
Bob had taken his clothes with him to dress after his bath—all of his clothes—everything he owned nearer than Lac Lumière. He had rolled them into a wad, on a bit of pebbly beach convenient to dress on, below the dam. Then he had gone up above and opened the sluice-gate. If he had wanted to lose them he could not have planned better. The first rush of freed water must have taken them away, and by the time he remembered them they were gone forever.
I scrambled back to camp and awaited developments. The first was Blanc, who came leaping, catlike, to the tent of “M’sieur.” He threw me one glance and slipped in and emerged in the same breath, with a blanket. I understood—as with our savage ancestors the first point was protection from the elements—from black flies and mosquitoes worse than elements.
A few minutes later a sad little procession filed up the rocks, and I stood inside my tent and tried to keep a right expression of countenance and attitude of mind. Godin came first, ruling his spirit to seriousness, yet with blue eyes gleaming; then Walter, silent but rolling in his gait and with a watery look in his glance; and then came Bob, slim and tall, and wearing a gray blanket with a dignity which was like a poke in the ribs.
I said: “Oh, Bob, I’m so sorry.” I said it without a smile, and then I went quickly into the tent.
Walter came, in a minute.