Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/388

Rh and then ended abruptly in a soft green hillside of cultivated fields.

But our last rapid had started the leaks in my canoe, and I was bailing every few hundred yards. As the evening was closing, and it threatened rain, we resolved to carry the canoes into the canal, get aboard a canal-boat, and mend the broken Blanid.

The tow-path was only a hundred yards from the river. A hearty canal-man made us welcome on his boat which had a hundred tons of coal on board. His name, he told us, was "Johnnie Curran, from Bristol, down the river." His mate was a small, foxy man, called "Billy," who spoke and walked like a paralytic; but a civil fellow when he got a little present.

"Johnnie" Curran was about thirty-three years old; rather below middle stature, but strong and active, with a stern face, like a fighting man; but with a merry eye and a smile in keeping, so that his features were lit up with constant good-humor and good-nature. He had lost two front teeth, and there was a deep scar on his forehead.

Everyone knew him on the tow-path and the canal. He was constantly hailing some friend, man or woman, by familiar names, or returning like friendly salutations. He had been canalling "twenty years, like his father before him." He