Captain Sam Part 11

"How's that?" asked Tom.

"Now _you're_ in a hurry, are you Tom? I was just about to explain and only stopped to swallow, but before I could do it you pushed a question in between my teeth."

"SILENCE!" roared Billy Bowlegs, "the court cannot be heard." Billy's father was sheriff of his county, and Billy had often heard him make more noise in commanding silence in the court room than the room full of people were making by requiring the caution.

Silence succeeding the laughter which Billy's unfilial mimicry had provoked, Sam resumed his explanation.

"There's a creek down there about a hundred yards, which runs into the river. It is a small affair, but is pretty well up now, and my plan is to make the canoe here and paddle her down the creek to the river while the water is high."

"Hurrah! now for work!" shouted the boys, who by this time had finished their breakfast.

"Where's your timber, Sam?" asked Tom, bringing in the axes and adze out of the tent.

Sam had taken pains to select a proper tree for his purpose, a gigantic poplar more than three feet in diameter, which lay near the creek, where it had fallen several years before.

When the boys saw it, they looked at Sam in astonishment.

"Why, Sam, you don't mean to work that great big thing into a dug-out, do you?" asked Sid Russell.

"Why not, Sid?" asked Sam.

"Why, its bigger'n a dozen dug-outs."

"Yes, that is true, but we're not going to make an ordinary canoe.

We're going to cut out something as nearly like a yawl, or a ship's launch as possible. She is to be sixteen feet long, and three and a quarter feet wide amidships."

Sam had learned a good deal about boats during his boyhood in Baltimore.

"Whew! what do you want such a whopper for?"

"Well, in the first place such a boat will be of use to us down at Pensacola, where we couldn't use an ordinary canoe at all. You see I'm going to shape her like a sea boat, partly by cutting away, and partly by pinning a keel to her."

"What'll you pin it on with?" asked Tom.

"With pins, of course; wooden ones."

"What'll you bore the holes with?"

"With my bit of iron, heated red hot."

"That's so. So you can."

"But, Sam," said Sid.

"Well?"

"You said that was in the first place; what's the next?"

"In the next place, we'll need such a boat in running down the river."

"Why?"

"Because there'll be no fit camping places in the low grounds, even if the water isn't over the banks, and so we must stay in the boat night and day, which would be rather an uncomfortable thing to do in a little round bottomed dug-out, that would turn over if a fellow nodded. Beside that I'm anxious to make all the time I can and when we leave here I mean to push ahead night and day without stopping."

"How'll we manage without eatin' or sleepin'?" asked Jake Elliott, who seemed somehow to be interested chiefly in discovering what appeared to him to be insurmountable obstacles in the way of the execution of Sam's plans.

"I have no thought," answered Sam, "of trying to do without either eating or sleeping."

"Where'll we eat," asked Jake, "ef we don't stop nowhere?"

"In the boat, of course."

"Yes, but where'll we cook?"

"Here," answered Sam.

"Before we start?"

"Yes, certainly. We'll kill some game, cook it at night and eat it cold on the way with cold bread. That will save our bacon to cook fish with down at Pensacola."

"Well, but how about sleeping?"

"That is one of my reasons for making so large a boat. We can sleep in her very comfortably, one staying awake to steer and paddle, all of us taking turns at it."

This plan was eagerly welcomed by the boys, who speedily fell to work upon the log under Sam's direction. The poplar was very easily worked, and the boys were all of them skilled in the use of the axes.

Relieving each other at the work, they did not permit it to cease for a moment, and in half an hour the trunk of the tree was severed in two places, giving them a log of the desired length to work on.

Then began the work of hewing it into shape, and this admitted of four boys working at once, two with the axes, one with the adze and one with the hatchet. When night came the log had already a.s.sumed the shape of a rude boat, turned bottom up, and Sam was more than satisfied with the progress made. His comrades were enthusiastic, however, and insisted upon building a bonfire and working for an hour or two by its light, after supper. They could not work at shaping it by such a light, but they turned it over and hewed the side which was to be dug out, down to a level with its future gunwales. The next day they began work early, and when they quitted it at night their task was done. The boat was a rude affair but reasonably well shaped, broad, so that she drew very little water considering her weight, and with a keel which kept her perfectly steady in the water.

CHAPTER XVI.

CAPTAIN SAM PLAYS THE PART OF A SKIPPER.

The launching of the boat was easy enough, and she rode beautifully on the water. To test her capacity to remain right side up, Sam put the boys one by one on her gunwale, and found that their combined weight, thrown as far as possible to one side, was barely sufficient to make her take water.

The stores were stowed carefully in the bow and stern; rough seats were fitted in after the manner of a boat's thwarts, but not fastened.

They were left moveable for the purpose of making it possible for several of the boys to lie down in the bottom of the boat at once.

There was no rudder as yet, although it was Sam's purpose to fix one to the stern as soon as possible, and also to make a mast when they should get to Pensacola, where a sail could be procured. For the present two long poles and some rough paddles were their propelling power.

"When we get out into the river," said Sam, "she will float pretty rapidly on the high water, and we need only use the paddles to give her steerage, and to paddle her out of eddies."

"What are the poles for?" asked Tom.

"To push her in shoal water, for one thing," answered Sam, "and to fend off of banks and trees."