“I say, do you know my arm’s lame, Nick? You wouldn’t think a chap would get out of practice, like that, eh?”
“Shows the enervating effect of the soft and flabby life you’ve led this summer. Everyone knows that your English climate is punk, anyway. Come on, and—Geewhilikins! I walked square into a tree!”
“’Ware timber!”
The voices diminished, and Monty’s skiff floated out into the river. The light was still good here. He turned the boat’s nose upstream and dug at his dilapidated oars. The left one had lost nearly half its blade, and so he had to favor it to keep from going aground. There was a faint breeze stirring now, just enough to ruffle the damp hair on his forehead and defeat the bloodthirstiness of the mosquitos. Behind him the wake of the skiff dissolved in coppery ripples. At his right the trees and bushes cast purple-black shadows on the surface and river and bank merged confusingly. The stream was evidently deserted, and he was glad of that, for his rowing was naturally erratic, and the oar with the broken blade was making it more so. Once he thought he heard a voice, but when he turned his head and looked upstream no one was to be seen, and he concluded that he had been mistaken. Possibly it had been a bird. A hoot-owl was crying in the distance, and somewhere, nearer at hand, a whip-poor-will was calling sadly and monotonously. Monty began to be conscious of a vague feeling of unhappiness, of loneliness. The quiet, shadowy river was strange, and seemed suddenly unfriendly. He wished he could look up and see the purple-gray peak of Mt. Leidy. He felt strangely homesick just then for his mountains. And so it was something of a relief as well as a surprise when, out of the silence and darkness, a warning cry arose, and was followed by the thump of colliding craft.
CHAPTER VI
BATTLE ROYAL
“Idiot!”
The voice, sharp, querulous, came from the gloom on the heels of the collision, and Monty half unseated by the shock, struggled around and peered surprisedly at the speaker. The skiff had wandered almost to the bank, and, since he was himself now in the darkness of the bordering trees, Monty had slight difficulty in making out the shadowy form of a canoe drawn close to the shore, and its lone occupant. The face of the latter was indistinct, only a grayish oval, but Monty was instantly convinced that he didn’t like it. In fact, he heartily disliked everything about the unknown canoeist, especially his voice.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demanded the other in tones that seemed to Monty deliberately insulting, and that, very naturally, roused his anger.
“Why don’t you give warning, Harold?” he retorted promptly. “Think I’m an owl?”