was very trusting of him, for how did he know I'd ever bring it
back? But he said I could leave it with a man named Pike, who
lives on Little Duck Island, and he'd get it tomorrow. So I gave
him half a dollar, and then I came away in the canoe. Aren't they
wabbly? I never was in one before."

"Did you paddle down here in a canoe? And you'd never been in one
before?"

"Yes. That is, I didn't do much with the paddle,--except push off
from the bank every now and then. The canoe seemed to come along
pretty well. How that river does twist! And it's very narrow,--I
should think the steamboat would stick."

The Captain opened his mouth helplessly, once or twice.

"Gosh sakes!" he said, "you warn't in no river. You was in
Pingree's Crik, or you wouldn't have got down here."

"I thought it seemed pretty narrow. But when I got out here--round
that corner--and came out where it's so much broader, I couldn't
make the canoe go at all, except backwards. The front end of her
kept swinging round, for the river was running the wrong way. At
last I ran right up on that island, and then I got out, for my
foot had gone to sleep. You see I hadn't dared to move, the canoe
wabbled so. And then I went to look at some critters that were
crawling around in the water,--they looked like tennis-racquets,
only their tails weren't quite big enough--"

"Horse-shoe crabs," said Ed Mason.