There is the scow (not a very romantic craft, reader, I own) fastened by its stone to the bank; and near it is the very skiff Davis and I used. The skiff is light and fleet, but as for the scow, it goes every way but the straight one. It will glide corner-wise, and make tolerable good way even broadside; but as for going straight forward, it appears to be the last thing in the world it intends doing. However, not more than four can sit comfortably in the skiff, so the majority of us must trust ourselves to the cork-screw propensities of the scow. Lavigne and Murray, with their ladies, take possession of the former, and the rest of us the latter. We all, then, embark upon the pure, glossy sheet for the recess. Ha! ha! ha! this is too amusing. Whilst the skiff shoots from us straight as a dart toward the goal, we go shuffling and wriggling along, first one side and then the other, like a bumpkin in a ball-room; and as the four who assumed the paddles relax their efforts in despair, the old scow turns broadside, and as if in contempt, is actually, I believe, making way backward.
“Paddle away, boys!” I exclaim, “or we’ll be at the bank again in a minute.”
“Paddle yourself,” growls Hull, who always entertained a decided objection to much exertion, although in the enthusiasm of the moment he had grasped one of the propellers. I seize the paddle he relinquishes, and whilst he seats himself sluggishly on the side of the scow, I bend myself to my task. The skiff is by this time half way over; and the good-natured laugh of its party at our troubles, comes ringing over the water. However, after a while we “get the hang” of the odd thing, and the pleasant tap, tap, tap of the ripples at its front, tell that we are moving merrily forward. Oh, isn’t the kiss of that wandering air-breath delicious! Whew! what a fluttering and whizzing! A flock of wild ducks, scared up from that long, grassy shallow to the right. How the sunshine gleams upon their purple backs, and flashes from their rapid wings. There they go toward the outlet at “the mills.” And the water, how beautifully mottled are its depths; how clear and transparent! It seems almost like another atmosphere. See the fishes swarming below. There goes a shiner like a flash of silver; is that an ingot of gold shooting past there, or a yellow perch? And, upon my word, if there wasn’t a salmon-trout showing its long, dark wavy back beside that log at the bottom, large enough for a six-pounder. I do wish we had our lines here. However, we came for a pic-nic, not a “fish.”