ip crunched
her copper nails over another just under water, whence she went bumping
and crunching, her captain's prudent and energetic guidance knocking
his flag one way and his wooden hatch the other, till finally his
troubles were behind him. Then the Fritz began to stir. Her commander
went overboard and released her, then leaped astride her deck and
paddled cautiously down the rift and slowly down the quieter water
below, howling through the pelting rain,

"Then let the world wag along as it will:
We'll be gay and happy still,"

until he came upon his comrades--one stumbling about over the blackened
roots of grass and underbrush from a recent fire in search of wood for
our needed noon-day blaze; the other with wet matches and birch bark,
and imprecations for which there was ample justification, vainly
seeking that without which hot coffee and broiled bacon cannot be. The
Kleiner Fritz's haversack supplied dry matches, fire began to snap,
coffee boiled, bacon sputtered on the ends of willow rods, hard tack
was set out for each man, and we sat upon our heels for lunch under the
weeping skies and willows, comparing notes and experiences.

[Illustration: PEKAGEMA FALLS.]

Thence, three hours through monotonous savanna and steady rain brought
us to the uppermost bay of Cass Lake, and unexpectedly upon a
straggling Indian village. We bore down upon it with yells, and there
came tumbling out from birch lodges and bark cabins the first human
beings we had seen for more than ten days, in all the ages, sizes,
tints, costumes and shades of filth known to the Chippewas of the
interior wilderness. At first they were a little shy of us, but we got
into a stumbling conversation with the only man of the whole lot who
wore breeches or could compass a little English, and soon the dirty,
laughing, wondering, chattering gang came down to inspect us and our,
to them, marvellous craft, and to fully enjoy what was perhaps the most
interesting event in many a long month of their uneventful lives. Then
we paddled across the bay, or upper lake, out into the broader swells
of Cass Lake itself, pulled four miles across to the northernmost point
of Colcaspi, or Grand Island, and made our second Saturday night's camp
upon its white sands at or very near the spot where Schoolcraft and his
party had encamped in July, forty-seven years before. The landward side
of the beautiful beach is skirted by an almost impenetrable jungle. We
had