“I tell you what you do, Bull,” said Joe finally. “You bring some good, reliable witnesses to me to prove that Poke carried his canoe instead of paddled it and I’ll—I’ll hear ’em.”
But Gary had cooled down by the next day and the witnesses never testified. I don’t think Gary ever saw the humor of that memorable aquatic contest, but he got so after awhile that he could grin when he was teased about it, and that wasn’t so bad for Gary. But he never blackened Poke’s shoes. And I, for one, don’t blame him!
The school enjoyed the event for days afterward and some of the Juniors got together and presented Poke with a loving-cup—which had all the ear-marks of a tin gallon measure—suitably inscribed in black paint. In the inscription Poke was referred to as the “Champion Dry-Ground Canoist of the World.”
“But do you mean to tell me,” asked Jeffrey after the race that forenoon, “that you went down this morning at half-past six or some such unearthly time and carried that canoe through the woods for practice?”
“Why not?” asked Poke. “You see, I wasn’t certain it could be done, on account of the bushes and things.”
“Nice time to find out about it,” laughed Jim. “Suppose you had found that it couldn’t be done?”
“Then I’d had to follow my original plan, which was to use two canoes.”
“Two canoes? How could you have done that?”
“Why, I’d have started in one, left it on the bank, hot-footed it through the woods and picked up another which would have been waiting for me. But I didn’t quite like to do that. It didn’t seem quite fair, you see. Of course there was nothing in the agreement prohibiting the use of two canoes, or twenty, but—well, there’s the spirit of the law to consider as well as the letter.” And Poke looked as virtuous as a saint.