The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1920-03-18

overweight and had a bad heart. I suffered
from many things, but the only one could
think Of was fiat feet and that didn't even
get me special classification. So I bent to
the oar.
The memory of the next hour is con-
fused kaleidoscope of cusswords, crabs, and
grief. l caught all three. Each wave was
signal for wild shout from the stern:
"Row! Darn you, row!" Whenever that
happened usually missed Lake Champlain
entirely and fell over on my back in the bot
tom of the boat. ami very nervous and sub
ject to sudden and cratic reactions when
spoken to sharply. Eefore long, too, l dis
covered that the builder of the boat had
omitted to provide anything like adequate
upholstering for the seats. The only really
happy moments | knew during that trip were
those l spent fat on my back among the de-
coys and defunct shorebirds in the bottom of
the Zaza.
Then we began to get reports as to our
likelihood of landing somewhere within hail
ing distance of Isle la Motto. All of them
were gloomy-as gloomy as trial balance
in midsummer. At first there was bare
chance of making it if we got all the breaks.
No one ever had had all the breaks before,
so perhaps this was the time. Then we were
licked by five big wives in succession and
that bright hope fadei. As l recall it our
heaviest losses occurred when Arch and Guy
were at the oar, but may be wrong.
From that time hope faded to give place
to grim despair. We knew we weren't go
ing to hit Isle la Motto. We knew we were
going to miss it by margin that even Ger
man admiral would have had trouble ex-
planning away. Finally we wondered if we
were even going to hit Vermont. In my
agony I saw myself pulling and yawing
around storm-tortured Lake Champlain end
lessly, watching over my shoulder for fleet
ing glimpses of the shore that ever beckoned
and receded. That sounds poetic, but there
was no poetry in the condition. The wind
was dying down in gusts and it was getting
ready to rain. Furthermore, it was getting
ready to be dark and it evidently intended to
be very dark.
When we reached the, longitude of Isle
la Motto we were about mile and a half
nearer the North Pole than we should have
been. There we summoned all hands aft
for council. Arch offered to bet a dollar
that he could row the lara ashore unaided.
This looked suspicious coming from life
long invalid and l suggested that we be al
lowed to syndicate our end of the bet, split
ting it three ways He promptly switched
the conversation over to discussion of sure
thing betters with casual reference to tin
horns.
Then we wasted fifteen minutes trying
to rig our poor little old jib so that it would
do something that not even the man who in
vented sails could have made it do. Guy
and |, not being sailors and correspondingly
suspicious that each new experiment meant
further trouble for us, sat by in gloomy
silence. Each experiment brought more pro-
family and left us greater distance from the
island.
By this time it was more dark than
light and Tommy announced that he knew
of one member of the party whose life he
considered worth saving. With the words
he hauled the old rowboat alongside, stepped
into it, and disappeared shoreward.
AT the last moment / hailed him and
suggested that he take at least one of us with
him, to which he replied that passenger
would make it too hard rowing. l thought
of my hour and half of agony rowing
across the lake and wept bitterly.
There we were, the three of us, and no
hope in sight. The sailing spirit that lurked
in Arch's bosom had one last flicker. Why
not rig the jib like the sail on catboat and
sail her in? was skeptical about there be-
ing any untried ways of putting up that long
suffering sail, but was willing to be shown.
/ don't know what we did. I didn't know
at the time. Probably turned it upside down
or other end to or cut off corner or did
something equally futile. At any rate the
net result was that at the end of our second
tack we were half mile farther from the
island than we were when we started.
Then rose up in outraged dignity and
WEAKNESS "We're going to Vermont" was