The picnic was conducted according to the time-honored formula of such festivities. There were lemonade and cold coffee in milk bottles; there were sandwiches in shoe boxes; there were hard-boiled eggs with accompanying salt in little twists of brown paper; there were olives and hat-pins to extract them with, and there were camel’s hair shawls to “spread on the damp ground.”
The rear-guard did not participate in the sumptuous feast. “A life on the ocean wave” was what they sought, and their investigations of the wooded neighborhood had not gone very far when they made discovery of an object which of all things is dear to the heart of a city boy, and that was a boat.
It was pulled up along the river bank near the picnic grounds, and as a matter of fact, belonged to the scouts. It was used by them in crossing the river to make a short-cut to and from Salmon River Village, instead of following the shore to a point opposite the town where there was a bridge.
“Findings is keepings” is the first law of the hoodlum code, and though the O’Connor boys hung back (partly because they had no right to the boat and more because they were afraid of the water), Sweet Caporal, who balked at nothing save a policeman, led the rest of his intrepid band to the boat and presently they were flopping clumsily about in midstream, much to the amusement of the O’Connor boys and several of the picnickers who clustered at the shore.
There are few sights more ridiculous than the ignorant handling of a boat. Sweet Caporal wielded an oar, Slats Corbett wrestled with another one, Jakie Mattenburg gallantly manned the helm, invariably pulling the tiller-lines the wrong way, while Jim Mattenburg, with a broken and detached thwart, did his best to counteract every effort of his companions. Amid these conflicting activities the boat made no progress and the ineffectual splashing and the contradictory orders which were shouted by the several members of the gallant crew were greeted with derisive hoots from the shore.
Several times an oar slipped its lock and went splashing into the water; once Sweet Caporal himself was capsized by the catching of the unwieldy oar in its lock and tumbled ingloriously backward into the bottom of the boat.
“Pull on the left one!” shouted Jim.
“Nah, pull on de odder one!” cried Slats.
“Both pull together,” sagely suggested someone on the shore, but that was quite impossible.
“Hold de rudder in de middle’, yer gump!” shouted Sweet Caporal.