ng off ze bord or in ze vatars!"

"I prefer the board," replied Coristine, "if it's as good of its kind as
that you gave us at dinner."

"Keep quiet, you do not understand him," interposed the schoolmaster;
"he means the shore, the bank of the river by the bord. N'est ce pas,
Monsieur?"

"Oui, oui, M'syae, le bord, le rivauge de la riviere."

"Non, Monsieur Pierre, nous allons prendre le bateau," answered
Wilkinson, with a dignity that his companion envied.

The red-nightcapped host called Baptiste.

"Vau t-en donc, Bawtiste, depeche twa, trouve deux petits bouts de
plaunche pour le canot."

Batiste soon returned with two boards.

"Canot 'ave no seat, you placea zem over two ends for seet down," said
Pierre, relapsing into English.

Wilkinson assumed the responsibility of the boards and the fishermen
proceeded to the river bank near the bridge to find the canoe. It was
long, and, for a dug-out, fairly wide, but ancient and black, and moist
at the bottom, owing to an insufficiently caulked crack. Its paddles had
seen much service, and presented but little breadth of blade.

"I should like to place these boards," said Wilkinson, as he surveyed
first them and then the dug-out; "I should like to place these boards,
one across the bow and the other across the stern, but I really cannot
decide which is the bow and which is the stern."

"She's a sort of a fore and after, Wilks, like the slip-ferry
steamboats. I think, if you could find a bit of chalk or charcoal, and
write bow on one plank and stern on the other, it would make her
ship-shape and settle the business."

"I have no sympathy, Corry, with makeshifts and factitious devices. I
wish to arrive at the true inwardness of this boat. At what end of a
boat is the anchor let down?"

"In the _Susan Thomas_ it was pretty near the bow, and I think I've seen
yachts riding at anchor that way in Toronto harbour."

"In the time of St. Paul, however, there were four anchors, if I
remember aright, cast out of the stern."

"I don't see how the anchor is going to help us. This long Tom Coffin
has nothing of the kind."

"You are sadly deficient in observation, Corry, or you would have
observed a rope, very much abraded indeed, but still a rope, by which
the vessel may be said, even though figuratively, to be anchored to this
stake."

"It's you're the clever man, Wilks; education has done wonders for you.
Now, I remember that rope is the painter; that's what The Cre