es, and you look over the side and see only the
black water in the gathering night.

Safe! I'm not sure now that I come to think of it that it isn't worse
than sinking in the Atlantic. After all, in the Atlantic there is
wireless telegraphy, and a lot of trained sailors and stewards. But out
on Lake Wissanotti,--far out, so that you can only just see the lights
of the town away off to the south,--when the propeller comes to a
stop,--and you can hear the hiss of steam as they start to rake out the
engine fires to prevent an explosion,--and when you turn from the red
glare that comes from the furnace doors as they open them, to the
black dark that is gathering over the lake,--and there's a night wind
beginning to run among the rushes,--and you see the men going forward
to the roof of the pilot house to send up the rockets to rouse the town,
safe? Safe yourself, if you like; as for me, let me once get back into
Mariposa again, under the night shadow of the maple trees, and this
shall be the last, last time I'll go on Lake Wissanotti.

Safe! Oh yes! Isn't it strange how safe other people's adventures seem
after they happen? But you'd have been scared, too, if you'd been there
just before the steamer sank, and seen them bringing up all the women on
to the top deck.

I don't see how some of the people took it so calmly; how Mr. Smith, for
instance, could have gone on smoking and telling how he'd had a steamer
"sink on him" on Lake Nipissing and a still bigger one, a side-wheeler,
sink on him in Lake Abbitibbi.

Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she went. You could feel the
boat sink, sink,--down, down,--would it never get to the bottom? The
water came flush up to the lower deck, and then,--thank heaven,--the
sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a
reed bank.

Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway,
if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh. Danger!
pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea. Why, it is just the
little things like this that give zest to a day on the water.

Within half a minute they were all running round looking for sandwiches
and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the remains of the
engine fires.

I don't need to tell at length how it all happened after that.

I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle would have had to settle down
there all night or till help came from the town, but some of