“Oh, he won’t hurt you,” urged Hartley, reassuringly; “I’ve told him he mustn’t.”
“I won’t go with him,” insisted Connorton. “He tried to murder me the first night I was here.”
“Oh, very well,” agreed Hartley, resignedly. “I’ll take Joe’s canoe and paddle you myself.”
Let me draw a veil over the return trip to Temagami Inn, lifting the edge of it slightly to give a general idea of what happened.
Connorton, with many misgivings, set out in Joe’s canoe with Hartley, simply because he was afraid to raise a second objection to any arrangement that whimsical gentleman might make.
Hartley knew no more about managing a canoe than he did about managing an aëroplane, and the best that he could do was to propel it in erratic circles, occasionally placing himself, his freight, and his passenger in jeopardy when he shifted his paddle from one side to the other. Connorton was helpless because he was compelled to assume a reclining position on top of the camp equipment, and he was angered because the Indians so far departed from their usual imperturbability as to respond to his screams for help with grins and grunts that plainly indicated amusement. Afraid to sit up, and expecting every minute to be rolled into the water, he could only plead with Hartley to return to shore, which Hartley was quite unable to do, and with the Indians to come and get them, which the Indians finally did.
A fresh start was then made, Paulson being put in the canoe with Joe, and Hartley and Connorton going with Jim, the other guide. Paulson was not altogether pleased with this arrangement; but he presently discovered that he was far better off than Connorton. For Hartley developed the most astonishing vagaries and a clumsiness that was equal to that of a bear cub. Three times during that memorable trip he tipped Connorton into the water. That he also went in did not help matters in any particular, so far as Connorton was concerned, for that close-figuring business man had but slightly less interest in the inventor’s life than he had in his own.
Moreover, on the portages Hartley loaded Connorton up with pots and pans until he resembled an itinerant tinsmith, and on one occasion he tripped him up—quite accidentally, of course—at the highest point of the divide between two lakes, and then added insult to injury by apologizing profusely as he jangled down the incline. He wandered away at noon, when they stopped for lunch, and it was only after an hour’s search that he was found in deep thought in a deep thicket. He was devising a harness, he said, that would enable a man to carry a larger camp equipment than was now possible; and he insisted upon harnessing Connorton up with a rope by way of experiment.
But Temagami Inn was reached at last. Connorton never was so utterly weary in his life. The physical strain of that day had been considerable, but the mental strain had been far greater. He had several times thought his chance of life slim and his chance for that half-million even slimmer. But Temagami Inn revived his hopes. Much of the camp impedimenta with which they had set out had been lost during the thrilling adventures of that day, but their “civilized clothes,” as Hartley designated them, had been left at Temagami Inn. So Connorton, feeling properly dressed once more, regained much of his confidence and composure.