CHAPTER XIX

WE START

The next few days were as busy as the preceding ones, except that the
work was not as heavy.

When we went down to the river in the morning we found Jim busily at
work. He was bending over, driving a nail in a board on the side and I
struck him fairly with a carefully aimed clod of earth.

"Hello, commodore, how are you this morning?" I inquired. "Were you
seasick last night?"

"What do you beach combers want?" asked the commodore severely. "I
haven't anything for you to eat."

"We want work," said Tom.

"Come aboard and I'll give you all you want," was the reply.

"Did she hold all right last night, Jim?" I asked.

"Steady as a scow," he replied.

"What are you going to do to-day?" Tom inquired.

"You and Jo can work on the side boards," he replied, "and I will make
the oars."

So we went cheerily about our work, feeling that in another day we would
finish the job.

"How many miles do you suppose we will make a day?" I asked.

"That depends on the current," replied Jim. "The captain said that an
old trapper told him that in some places the river went over twenty
miles an hour."

"That's as fast as some trains," Tom said.

"Of course it averages much below that," continued Jim, "Probably it is
going ten miles by here."

"We ought to make a hundred miles a day in some places, then," I said.

"You can't tell; sometimes we will have to walk," responded Jim.

"Walk!" exclaimed Tom. "How's that?"

"Well, climb would be the better word," he explained, "because we will
come to rapids, where we will have to let it down by ropes while we are
climbing along the cliffs."

"You might just as well try to hold a dozen runaway horses as that boat
going down a steep rapid," protested Tom.

"That's so," said Jim and his face clouded as he thought it over. "Never
mind, I'll back this craft to go through. 'The Captain' is no egg shell
of a boat. All we will have to do is to hold on. You can't sink her and
I tell you she's put together to stay."

"How do you think she will act in the current, being so much broader in
the beam than at the bow?" asked Tom.

"You see if she isn't easier to steer than a flat bottomed scow," said
Jim. "The way she is cut under fore and aft will help a whole lot. Then
the logs being hollowed out makes her more buoyant."

The evening of the third day after this conversation found us ready to
embark the next morning. All our supplies were aboard. What