thers--larger and
wiser now--are still frolicking in the waters of the Shelburne, unless
some fish-hog has found his way to that fine water, which I think
doubtful, for a fish-hog is usually too lazy and too stingy to spend the
effort and time and money necessary to get there.

Chapter Eighteen

_There's nothing that's worse for sport, I guess,_
_Than killing to throw away;_
_And there's nothing that's better for recklessness_
_Than having a price to pay._

Chapter Eighteen

We had other camp diversions besides reading. We had shooting matches,
almost daily, one canoe against the other, usually at any stop we
happened to make, whether for luncheon or to repair the canoes, or
merely to prospect the country. On rainy days, and sometimes in the
evening, we played a game of cards known under various names--I believe
we called it pedro. At all events, you bid, and buy, and get set back,
and have less when you get through than you had before you began.
Anyhow, that is what my canoe did on sundry occasions. I am still
convinced that Del and I played better cards than the other canoe,
though the score would seem to show a different result. We were
brilliant and speculative in our playing. They were plodders and not
really in our class. Genius and dash are wasted on such persons.

I am equally certain that our shooting was much worse than theirs,
though the percentage of misses seemed to remain in their favor. In the
matter of bull's-eyes--whenever such accidents came along--they happened
to the other canoe, but perhaps this excited our opponents, for there
followed periods of wildness when, if their shots struck anywhere, it
was impossible to identify the places. At such periods Eddie was likely
to claim that the cartridges were blanks, and perhaps they were. As for
Del and me, our luck never varied like that. It remained about equally
bad from day to day--just bad enough to beat the spectacular fortunes of
Eddie and Charles the Strong.

In the matter of wing-shooting, however--that is to say, shooting when
we were on the wing and any legitimate quarry came in view--my
recollection is that we ranked about alike. Neither of us by any chance
ever hit anything at all, and I have an impression that our misses were
about equally wide. Eddie may make a different claim. He may claim that
he fired oftener and with less visible result than I. Possibly he did
fire oftener, for he had a repeating rifle