Newport was reached, after an all-night journey, at about ten o'clock in the morning. The canoeists went straight to the freight-house to inspect the canoes. They were all there, resting on the heads of a long row of barrels, and were apparently all right. The varnish of the Dawn and the Sunshine was scratched in a few places, and the canvas canoe had a very small hole punched through her deck, as if she had been too intimate with a nail in the course of her journey. The boys were, however, well satisfied with the appearance of the boats, and, being very hungry, walked up to the hotel to get dinner and a supply of sandwiches, bread, and eggs for their supper.
Dinner was all ready, for, under the name of breakfast, it was waiting for the passengers of the train, which made a stop of half an hour at Newport. A band was playing on the deck of a steamer which was just about to start down the lake, and the boys displayed such appetites, and called for so many things, as they sat near the open window looking out on the beautiful landscape, that they astonished the waiter.
A good, quiet place for launching the canoes was found, which was both shady and out of sight of the hotel. It was easy enough to carry the three empty canoes down to the shore; but the Sunshine, with her heavy cargo, proved too great a load, and about half-way between the freight-house and the shore she had to be laid on the ground and partly emptied. Here Joe, who tried to carry the spars and paddles of four canoes on his shoulder, found that there is nothing more exasperating than a load of sticks of different sizes. No matter how firmly he tried to hold them together, they would spread apart at every imaginable angle.
Before he had gone three rods he looked like some new kind of porcupine with gigantic quills sticking out all over him. Then he began to drop things, and, stooping to pick them up, managed to trip himself and fall with a tremendous clatter. He picked himself up, and made sixteen journeys between the spot where he fell and the shore of the lake, carrying only one spar at a time, and grasping that with both hands. His companions sat down on the grass and laughed to see the deliberate way in which he made his successive journeys, but Joe, with a perfectly serious face, said that he was going to get the better of those spars, no matter how much trouble it might cost him, and that he was not going to allow them to get together and play tricks on him again.
It was tiresome stooping over, packing the canoes, but finally they were all in order, and the Commodore gave the order to launch them. The lake was perfectly calm, and the little fleet started under paddle for a long sandy point that jutted out into the lake some three miles from Newport. The Sunshine and the Dawn paddled side by side, and the two other canoes followed close behind them.
"'Boys, isn't this perfectly elegant?" exclaimed Harry, laying down his paddle when the fleet was about a mile from the shore, and bathing his hot head with water from the lake. "Did you ever see anything so lovely as the blue water?"
"Yes," said Charley; "the water's all right outside of the canoes, but I'd rather have a little less inside of mine."
"What do you mean?" asked Harry. "Is she leaking?"
"SHE'S HALF FULL OF WATER."