“And of course she swung round broadside to the current.”
“Didn’t she, though! If I’d jumped out of her on the side I intended to when she first struck she would have swung against my legs; but I remembered that you must always jump out of a canoe in a rapid on the side above her.”
“What do you mean by the side above her?” asked Tom.
“I mean that you must not jump out below her.”
“That’s as clear as anything could be,” said Joe. “Still, I’d like to know what you mean by ‘below her.’”
“There’s an upper end and a lower end to every rapid, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the side of the canoe toward the upper end of a rapid is what I call ‘above her.’ If you jump out on that side she can’t float against your legs and smash them.”
“Now, if you’ve got through with that question,” continued Charley, “I want to say that if the Commodore had put his stores and his ballast-bag in the stern of his canoe, so as to make her draw a good deal more water aft than she did forward, she would have struck aft of midships, and wouldn’t have swung around.”
“You’re right. That’s just what Macgregor recommends, but I forgot it. Boys, I hereby order every canoe to be loaded with all her ballast and cargo in the after compartment before we start to-morrow.”