Slowly the little craft moved forward, then her speed increased as she felt the resistless drawing of the current, and in a moment her delicate bow was trembling on the brink. She seemed to hesitate an instant—then plunged!
As her keel struck the apron she turned on one side, and the same instant the rudder bearings caught some obstruction and whirled her bottom up. A dark hull and a weather-stained felt hat bobbed about, making two blots in the white foam that swirled and tossed under the fall; then the hat moved toward the boat, and in less than a minute Simpson’s broad shoulders emerged, hauling the Sybaris toward the bank. Two fishermen, catching caddice-worms for bait a short distance below, hastened to the rescue, and came up in time to help in bailing out; and before I was ready to follow with the Rena the canoe was again afloat, uninjured, but with a slightly damaged cargo. I considered the situation very carefully, and in view of the fact that it was late in the afternoon and the only spare dry suit of clothes between us was stowed in my boat, decided, for Simpson’s sake (who, I remembered, had a slight cold), to go round through the canal.
I did so, and the fishermen carried my craft down to the river.
This caution on my part proved quite unnecessary, so far as Simpson was concerned. I left him an hour later, clad in my best suit and with sails unfurled to dry; but the wind gradually drew the boat off, and when he discovered her she was well out in the river. Of course, in the absence of the other canoe, there was nothing to do but run for it, and when I returned it was to find him steaming by the fire. We stayed in this, our last camp, for some time. It was only four miles from Oswego, and we lingered, reluctant to leave the river we had followed so long. In the cool evenings we would sit by the fire and watch its flickering blaze reflected in the water, or strolling along the shore would startle the fish that had come up into the shallows.
The season was approaching Indian summer, and all nature seemed hushed and expectant. Some mornings the sun rose in a burst of splendor, converting the whole earth, wet with dew, into a vast sparkling mirror. Again a bank of fog made it seem as if our point were the end of the earth, projecting into space, till the light in the east glowed through and showed us the forms of trees and houses looming up like phantoms across the river. A kindly old man living near often came to see us, and seating himself on a camp-stool would give long accounts of the country in the early days. But one morning we pushed off and took our last voyage on the Oswego, drifting down through its broad mouth into Lake Ontario, where, putting the canoes on board a steamer, we sailed for Charlotte.
The passengers were most of them from the Thousand Islands, one of those well-mixed companies. There was the jaunty girl who read a novel all the way, and actually looked stylish in a hat as forlorn as Simpson’s. And the aggressive old gentleman with convictions, who hammered his theories of government into the self-satisfied senator from Maryland—the latter a large English-looking man, with sandy hair, a tweed suit and green necktie, who listened with an air of amused patience.
The lake was very quiet, and the steamer left a long, shining wake in the greenish-gray expanse, while the smoke rolled back till it settled into a haze on the darkening horizon.
Gradually the colors faded from the sky. The groups on deck drew their wraps about them and moved closer together. It grew quite dark, then a bell clanged—we moved slower.
Lights flashed, people started to their feet. We had reached Charlotte, and our cruise was over.
