"Or a duck could he swim," put in the Vice.
"Do you mean that you prefer to run the rapids?" asked the Commodore.
"Say so, then," said the Commodore, with editorial sternness, "Vice?"
"The one delight of a canoe cruise," said the Vice, "is to run rapids. I don't know of another joy that compares with it, unless it be that of a Presidential campaign full of personalities."
"I decide in favor of the canal," said the Commodore. "My duty to society demands it. Moreover, I encountered this morning a large number of natives, all of whom without a single exception assured me that the rapids could not be run. Running unknown rapids is attended by considerable danger, and while the loss of a Statesman, an Artist or a Scribbler might be a blessing to suffering humanity, an Editor cannot be spared. Editors are born, not made, and are consequently very rare."
"Which fact, like that of the crocodile destroying its young," remarked the Vice, "is a proof of the merciful interposition of Providence to save the human race from what might otherwise be a terrible scourge."
As the natives had missed neither spoons, poultry nor any other easily secreted property during the night, they viewed the departing fleet with kindly eyes, and pressed sundry favors upon it. The expedition attempted to advance in column under sail, but it speedily became involved in difficulties with sundry saw-logs and slightly submerged ropes, until all available seamanship was called into exercise to avoid humiliating disaster. When the entrance to the canal was reached, the navigators discovered that the water was spanned, at short intervals, by bridges not only so low as to compel the striking of masts, but also to necessitate the striking of signal staffs fore and aft, and the temporary assumption, by the various commanders, of a physical attitude most truly devout. As the fourth bridge was approached by the expedition, it was also reached by an industrious shower, and no one made haste to pass from under the cover afforded by the structure.
"Think of the poor sailors on the broad ocean, with no bridge to shelter them," remarked the Cook, as he improved the opportunity to light a peaceful pipe. Just then a small stream of water, in search of its final level, meandered between two planks of the bridge, and trickled into the Cook's pipe, producing a sizzle which seemed to greatly titillate the nerves of those who were not smoking. Then another stream struck the helmet of the Vice and broke into what would have been a graceful cascade had not its perfect curve been broken by the official nose. The Purser bowed his head to avoid showing unseemly merriment at the expense of his superior officer, when another stream, heavily charged with the soil which wagons had deposited upon the bridge, insinuated itself between his shirt and his skin. Then began a magnificent but ineffectual struggle of mind against matter. Given, a bridge the planks of which were not more than ten inches wide, and several men whose shoulders exceeded in width any two of the planks, and whose depth of chest, with its environment, also exceeded the distance between any two cracks, and the reader will perceive, more freely than by any logical form of demonstration, the utter futility of free will in a contest against destiny. The best that man can do in such an unequal conflict is to prepare himself as well as possible for the blow, and this the Commodore did by throwing a rubber poncho (a square sheet with a hole in the middle) over his head, the ends dropping outside the gunwales of the boat, and shedding the water into the canal. The wooden decks of the Chrysalids kept water from dripping into the boats except amidships, the oilcloth decking of the flagship served a similar purpose, but the inside of the Cherub was soon deplorable in the extreme.