“They might slip outen my pocket if we should happen to get capsized, but they’ll be safe there,” chuckled Jake. “T’other side of the lake is a mighty jubus place to land a canoe on a dark night like this one is, ’cause there’s so many snags there to pester a feller.”
“Now, then, what’s keeping you?” demanded Jim, impatiently. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
“Well, why don’t you pile in?” asked Jake, in reply. “I’ll shove the canoe out till she floats, an’ then I’ll step in myself. I ain’t afeared of gettin’ my stockin’s wet.”
In accordance with these instructions Jim took possession of the bow, his companion seated himself in the stern, and Jake shoved me from the shore. When the water was a little more than knee-deep, he stepped aboard and took up his paddle. His added weight made me settle down until the water came within two or three inches of the top of my gunwale, and I expected that Jake would stop and ask his passengers how they “liked the look of things” now that they were afloat; but he did nothing of the kind, for it was not on his programme to take them back to shore after he had got fairly started with them. He dipped his paddle into the water and with a few quick, strong strokes left the trees on the bank out of sight. If I could have spoken to them I could have quieted the fears of Jake’s timid passengers in very few words. I did not believe that the three of them weighed much more than half my floating capacity, which was eight hundred pounds.
The lake wasn’t an inch over five hundred yards wide at this point, and neither was the water more than fifteen or twenty feet deep. Jake was not more than ten minutes in coming within sight of the opposite shore, and then he began twisting about, looking first one side of his bow passenger and then the other, as if he were searching for something. The beach was, as he had said, a bad place to make a landing on a dark night. In fact there was no beach there; nothing but a low, muddy shore, which was thickly lined with gnarled and twisted roots and sharp-pointed snags. It was a fine place for an accident, even in broad daylight; but Jake could have passed through in perfect safety if he had been so minded. Instead of that, he picked out the wickedest looking sawyer in the lot and headed me straight for it, with longer and stronger strokes. Jim, who was seated in the bow, could not see what he was doing, and the attention of the man who occupied the stern was so fully taken up with other matters (keeping his balance, for one) that he could not think of any thing else. While I was wondering what Jake was going to do, he ran my bow high and dry upon the leaning sawyer; and in less time than it takes to tell it I rolled completely over, and came right side up, turning Jake and his passengers out into the cold waters of the lake.