THE BOY IN THE GRAY CANOE
He frequently wondered afterwards how he ever reached the capsized
canoe, why his own craft didn’t turn over and drop him into the
water, as it threatened to do fifty times during that race! A special
Providence must have watched over him, for he took some wild chances,
quite forgetting his former nervousness and all he knew of the
eccentricities of canoes. Often he got off his course, and doubtless
he wasted much effort in the course of his unskilled exertions, but
he reached his goal in short time nevertheless. As he drew near he
discovered to his surprise that the overturned craft had not held Tom
and Joe Kirkham, that, in fact, but one youth clung to the keel and
that he was a total stranger.
“Much obliged,” called the latter as the yellow canoe swept alongside.
“Think you can tow me and the canoe too?” The shipwrecked mariner
seemed vastly unconcerned and Jerry felt that the bottom of the
situation had sort of fallen out, so to speak; that what had had the
appearance of a gallant rescue had dwindled flatly to a merely casual
act of courtesy! He stopped paddling as his craft threatened to stave
in the other and backed water, suddenly again very conscious of the
uncertainties of canoeing.
“I reckon so,” he answered. “You ain’t a North Bank feller, are you?”
“No.” Jerry thought the brief disclaimer sounded a bit emphatic, so
emphatic as to be almost discourteous. “No, I live over there in the
house with the red roof.” The boy in the water nodded a dripping head
toward the south bank of the river where a frame bungalow peered from
behind a screen of trees. “My name’s Ingraham. You’re one of the school
fellows, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Jerry agreed. “Can you get in here without upsetting us?”
“I could, but I’m not going to. The bow’s too high out and I weigh
about a ton with all these wet clothes. Generally I just wear my
bathing suit, but to-day I didn’t. Wait until I find the sheet and I’ll
hold it and you can paddle across to shore. I reckon the pesky thing’ll
tow all right after we get started.”
He suddenly disappeared from sight, rather to Jerry’s surprise, and was
gone a long moment. When he reappeared, sputtering, he had the end of
a small rope in one hand, and with it he swam around to the stern of
the yellow canoe. “All right,” he panted, taking hold of the gunwale.
“Start her easy. She’ll pull hard at first.”
“Reckon you can hold on there till I get to the shore?” asked Jerry
doubtfully.
“Sure. Don’t you worry about me. You’ll have all you can do to paddle.”
Jerry found that that was true enough, especially at first, for the
overturned canoe, with its unfurled sail thrusting down into the
water, was a dead weight astern. Jerry saw Ingraham’s fingers whiten
on the edge of the canoe as the pull came and heard a protesting grunt
from that youth. But he held on, and just when it seemed that Jerry’s
thrusts of the paddle were to yield no result, and just when the
strain on the arms of the boy in the water had become intolerable, the
craft behind moved sluggishly forward. After that progress was not so
difficult and the strange tow headed toward a narrow sandy beach on the
shadowed side of the stream. After a minute Ingraham spoke again.
“Say, if you’ll paddle on one side you’ll get along faster,” he
remarked critically. “You’re digging me in the ribs every time you
shift over here.”
“Got to keep her running straight,” answered Jerry briefly.
“Oh! Don’t you know how to paddle?”
“Not much.”
“You’d better keep out of canoes, then, I’d say!”
“I’m surely going to after this. Reckon a canoe’s a good thing to keep
away from if you don’t know how to paddle it or sail it!”
“That a crack at me? Well, I know how to sail a canoe all right.
Trouble was I lost the sheet and leaned out for it and the crazy thing
turned right over. But I surely wouldn’t be messing around this river
in one of them if I couldn’t paddle.”
“Reckon it was sort of lucky for you I was messing around, though,”
returned Jerry quietly.
“How’s that?”
“Well, you was needing help, I’d say, about the time I arrove!”
“Oh, shucks, I was all right. I’d have drifted to shore after a while.
Why, I’ve been spilled out a dozen times around here! Last time was
down off the Academy and a couple of sailors from the _Reina Mercedes_
picked me up. Canoes are mighty cranky things. Of course, I don’t mean
that I’d have preferred to stay in the water, because it might have
been a couple of hours before I got ashore, and I’m much obliged to
you, but there wasn’t any danger.”
“You’re welcome,” said Jerry dryly. “You live yonder?”
“Yes. We’ve been there all summer. I’m dying to get back home, but my
folks want to stay until November some time.”
“Don’t you have to go to school?”
“I reckon I’ve had all the schooling I’m likely to get,” chuckled the
other. “Mother’s sort of an invalid and we travel around a good deal
and so there isn’t much chance. I went to a school in Florida part of
last winter. Didn’t learn anything, though. Mother wanted me to go over
yonder to your school this fall while we were here, but going to a
place for a little while that way doesn’t get you anything, and that’s
what I told her. You don’t need to go much closer. I can wade in from
here.”
Jerry, however, kept on until the yellow canoe nosed up on the sand.
Then: “If you’ll pull her up a little I’ll get out and help you turn
your canoe over.”
“Oh, rot! Let her stay. I’ll get our darkey to help me to-morrow. Say,
what’s your name?”
“Benson. I’d be pleased to help you if you’d like I should.”
“No, let the old thing stay as it is. I’ll tie this rope so she can’t
get away. Well, much obliged to you, Benson. I say, come along up to
the house and meet my folks. I’ll make out you saved my life and you’ll
have a swell time, Benson.”
Ingraham grinned mockingly. Jerry had his first real look at him then
as he stepped out on the little white beach, and he wasn’t altogether
favorably impressed with what he saw. Ingraham was fairly tall and well
filled out, but he didn’t appear very healthy, in spite of his tanned
skin. Jerry guessed that the muscles beneath it were rather flabby. He
had rather nice eyes that were almost as dark as his black hair, but
his expression was somewhat arrogant and his smile seemed to hold a
sneer. In age he might have been fifteen or sixteen; surely no older.
Jerry shook his head in response to the invitation. “Much obliged,” he
answered, “but I’ve got to be getting back. Reckon it’s right late. If
I was you I’d get into some dry clothes. You might catch cold standing
around like that.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’m used to getting soaked. Well, thanks for
pulling me ashore, Benson. See you again some time, maybe.”
“Likely so,” replied Jerry, doubting it nevertheless. “Evening.”
He pushed the yellow canoe off and turned it unskillfully, quite
certain that Ingraham was viewing his efforts with that disdainful
smile of his, and then set off across the river. Once, when he
had paddled some distance, he looked back. From where he was the
green-and-red bungalow high up on the bluff showed plainly in the
slanting sunlight and he thought that a figure on the veranda waved
to him. But he wasn’t certain, and as waving back would be skittish
business he went on again. The river was empty now above the distant
bridge, a broad ribbon of amber flecked with gold and bordered along
the shadowed margin with steely gray. Ahead, the old brick Hall
glowed mellowly in the sunlight and the squat yet graceful cupola was
poised whitely against the clear sky. A single skiff was nosing to
the float, but long before Jerry arrived it had been housed and its
occupants had gone up the hill. He brought the yellow canoe alongside
in quite a shipshape style and laid his paddle on the float. Then, very
circumspectly, he crawled out.
Now, getting a canoe out of the water unassisted is no simple matter,
as Jerry speedily determined. Had he lifted the bow over the edge of
the float and then pulled the craft forward and out by gunwale or
thwarts he would have done well enough, although such treatment isn’t
especially beneficial to varnish. Instead of that method, however, he
elected to lift it up bodily by the middle thwart. Leaning over the
edge of the float, he took a firm grip and heaved. A wet canoe weighs
more than Jerry calculated it would. It came up perhaps a foot, but
then it went down again, and Jerry went with it. His feet slipped out
behind him on the wet planks and he plunged forward, his head and
shoulders disappearing into the canoe. The canoe rolled frantically and
sidled away from the float, and Jerry accompanied it. Then it rolled
the other way and Jerry was dumped unceremoniously into the river!
He found himself standing upright between float and canoe in some
four feet of water, clutching very desperately at the former. He felt
exceedingly surprised and extremely ridiculous for a moment. Then
relief at the discovery that he was in no danger of drowning and
amusement at the escapade took possession of him and, pulling the
obstreperous canoe with him, he climbed out on the float, dripping and
chuckling. To have braved the perils of deep water for nearly an hour,
and dashed headlong to the rescue of Ingraham without misadventure,
only to be shipwrecked on dry land, in a way of speaking, struck him
as very, very funny, and he had his laugh out before he made a new
study of the situation and pulled the canoe out bow-first and at length
stowed it safely away in its place.
Of course luck would have it that Tom was awaiting him in Number 7 when
he got there. Jerry gave a strictly truthful account of his ducking,
but he omitted all mention of the incident of the capsized canoe. Tom
enjoyed a fine laugh, and then quickly sobering, demanded: “Look here,
Jeremiah! Didn’t you tell me once you couldn’t swim much?” Jerry nodded
sheepishly.
“I thought you did! Are you plumb crazy? You keep away from canoes and
boats till you learn how. You hear me? Suppose you’d turned over out
there in the middle! Why, you’d have drowned!”
“Reckon I might have clung on to the canoe till some one came and got
me,” ventured Jerry mildly.
Tom snorted contemptuously. “You’d have gone straight down, you silly
chump, and when you came up the canoe would have been yards away from
you. Besides, it’s no easy matter to hold on to an overturned canoe,
let me tell you. If you’d ever tried it you’d know.”
“I’ve seen it done,” said Jerry.