"That's so," said Harvey, half pausing in a stroke in which he had started to exert his strength to the utmost. "Lucky I've got you. You always keep cool. How do you manage to do it?"
Henry Burns smiled, but made no reply. Instead, he pointed ahead to where the Ellison brothers, putting their strength into their work, were showing several rods of clear water between them and the two nearest canoes, which were going along side by side.
"They've got the race won in the first five minutes," said Henry Burns. "See Tom and Bob take it easy till they get limbered up."
The two thus indicated were, indeed, setting an example worthy to be followed. They had started off at an easy, regular stroke, one which they could keep up for hours and increase when they should see fit. They were paying no attention to the leading canoe, but were exchanging a word or two with the Warrens, who were striving to imitate their course and pace.
The first mile and a half that intervened between the starting point and the Ellison dam was quickly covered. The Ellison boys, still leading, were out on shore and carrying their canoe up the bank when the others were still some rods away. It was a steep pitch of the shore, and Tom and Bob, when they came to it, took it leisurely, saving their wind. The others followed, in like fashion. Harvey and Henry Burns were the last to make the portage.
Once around the dam, on higher level, the canoes were launched again, and the race continued.
A little way up the shore from the dam, Tom and Bob and the Warren boys, some distance ahead of the rear canoe, saw an odd little figure swinging and swaying in the top of a birch tree overhanging the water. The Ellison boys had passed her unnoticed. Her bit of skirt fluttering, and her hair waving, showed that the occupant of this novel swing was a girl.
All at once, to their horror, she seemed to slip and fall. Down she came from her perch, struck the water with a splash and sank beneath the surface.
Tom and Bob, driving their paddles into the water with desperate energy, darted on ahead of the Warren boys, who bent to the paddles and shot after them. The two canoes fairly flew through the water, while the four occupants gazed anxiously ahead over the surface for signs of the girl's reappearance.
To their amazement, a laughing voice hailed them most unexpectedly, from shore. They looked toward the bank, where, just emerging, dripping wet, the girl was waving a hand to them.