nderstood.

When he set her down on shore she was as white as death. From that day
she treated him a little coolly--up to the last moment, out on the bay.

It was a bright, sunshiny day when the three--Lord Meton, Lady Isobel,
and Thomas Jefferson Brown--set off in a big birchbark canoe, bound for
Harrison's Island, a dozen miles out from the mainland. But you can't
tell much about sunshine and calm on Hudson Bay. They're like a jealous
woman's smile, masking something hidden. Four miles out, the wind came
up; midway between the island and the mainland, it was a small gale.
Even at that, Thomas Jefferson Brown would have made it all right if the
beat of the sea hadn't broken a rotten thread under the bow, letting the
birch seam part with a suddenness that sent a little spurt of water up
into Lady Isobel's face.

What? No, this isn't going to have the regulation hero-act end, in
which Thomas Jefferson Brown saves the life of the lady he loves. It's
something different--something that Thomas Jefferson Brown never guessed
at when the water spurted in, and Lady Isobel turned to him with a
little scream, her beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with horror.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "Here, take this jacket and hold it down
tight over the seam. We'll reach the island, all right."

Lady Isobel held the jacket over the hole, and Thomas Jefferson Brown
put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle.
After a minute or two, he saw a little trickle of water, beginning to
ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant,
and signaled Lord Meton to bend over toward him.

"Take off your clothes," he said, so low that Lady Isobel couldn't hear.
"Can you swim?"

"Not a stroke," said Lord Meton, and his face went as white as chalk;
but it was no whiter than Thomas Jefferson Brown's.

When a birchbark seam begins to part there's no power on earth that will
hold it when the canoe is heavily loaded. A few minutes later, the water
was gushing in by the quart about Lady Isobel's feet. She fought hard
to hold it back. When at last she saw that it was hopeless, she turned
again, to see Lord Meton in his underwear, and Thomas Jefferson Brown
stripped of everything but his shirt and his buckskin trousers, which
don't water-sog. He laughed straight into her face, as if it was all an
amusing joke; and then, suddenly, he began playing that banjo thing with
his mouth.

It was all so strange, wit