Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/426

Rh like a temptation. In an instant the concert had vanished. The curtain of the commonplace fell over that finer tympanum that almost hears spiritual voices, and the canoe man was bailing his boat with a tin dipper, while he grumbled at fate.

The dusky drivers waited on the towpath, and we soon started again, keeping up a lively conversation from boat to wagon. But the leak grew, the night was closing, and we were in a very strange land.

"Let us tie a rope to the cart and tow the boats," we cried, and the picture of riding indolently up the canal was like a charm.

We fastened the canoes bow and stern and tied the longest painter, thirty or more feet in length, to the tailboard of the cart, and away we went. But before we had proceeded twenty feet the light rope, slackened by the rapidity of the light and low boats, caught on a stump by the water side. The leading canoe felt the pull, and darted headlong to the bank, and had not the boys at once stopped the horse the canoes would have been pulled to pieces, or dragged clean up on the towpath.

We tried again and again, with the same result, and then we felt ashamed of our superior knowledge of a few hours before, and interiorly begged the nasal lock-keeper's pardon.