began the long, hard paddle
upstream again to overtake the others. Katherine would have been game to
go on paddling all day rather than say Eeny-Meeny was a bother to tow,
but she was very glad of the order given by Uncle Teddy, which gave her
a chance to sit in the bottom of the canoe and do nothing but look at
the scenery and keep an eye on Eeny-Meeny, lest she should give them the
slip again.

The change of paddlers brought Anthony to the place of bow paddler in
the third canoe. "Now you'll see some real paddling," was his gracious
remark when he took the seat the Monkey had vacated in his favor.

"Look out you don't run over any snags," cautioned the Monkey. "There
are some sharp stumps under the surface of the water and they're ugly
customers."

"You don't need to tell me about them," replied Anthony pertly, "I guess
I know how to paddle as well as you do. You don't always need to be
handing me directions how to do things." And he started off with a
series of jerky dips, which set the canoe swaying from side to side so
that Migwan had an effort to keep it straight in the line of the others.

"Steady there, you third bow paddler," shouted Uncle Teddy, and Anthony
subsided.

In the last canoe Katherine and Gladys were lustily shouting:

"Sing a song of paddling,
A canoe full of Slim,
Four and twenty haystacks
Ain't as wide as him.
When the boat goes over
Won't there be a splash?
All the fishes in the brook
Will turn into hash!"

The other canoes took up the song and shouted it until Slim, throwing
handfuls of water in every direction, sprinkled the singers into
silence.

The country through which they were passing was for the most part thick
woods. Sometimes there was a narrow meadow on each side of the river
with the trees in the distance, sometimes there was a swamp, but more
often they were passing between high bluffs crowned with forests. At
times it was actually gloomy down there in the narrow passage, for the
sun was behind the trees high above them; then again as the banks became
low the hot sun shone unmercifully on their heads and made their eyes
ache as it sparkled on the ripples.

Just as they had settled down to nice steady paddling and were making
good progress upstream, Uncle Teddy called out that he was aground. The
river bed seemed suddenly to rise up and strike the bottom of the
canoes. A few feet back the water was swift and deep; here a sand bar
stret