CHAPTER VIII

CANOE TESTS AND A CAMP FIRE

Eloise in her red and black bathing suit and scarlet cap was a striking little figure. Lithe and active, she selected her paddle and flew down to the dock to select her canoe, for the canoe tests were in progress. “Wish me good luck, girls,” said she as she pushed out her canoe from the sands and jumped in it.

Out beyond the dock and floats, toward the back water, a blue canoe, bottom up, was being steadily pushed to shore by some swimmer, whose bobbing head showed behind it. One girl had brought in her canoe, pushed its nose into the sand, and while drawing herself into a reclining position upon it declared that she was going to take a nap then and there. Another had gone out where the current was almost too strong for her and was having difficulty to manage a canoe that apparently wanted to go down the Kennebec and out to sea. She was making slight headway, while from the guarding rowboat came an occasional word of encouragement.

“I can’t do it,” she said at last. “I could swim it, but I can’t take the canoe in.” The rowboat approached and a dripping figure climbed over its side. Both girl and canoe were brought to the dock. It was Cathalina, her face solemn with disappointment.

“Better luck next time, Cathalina,” said Betty, who was almost as disappointed as Cathalina, but would not show it.

“I’ll wait till tomorrow before I try it again. Isn’t it horrid? I wish I were a regular Samson!”

“You’ll do it all right the next time. I don’t believe I could have done it either if I had been where you were. Go out toward the back water tomorrow. Here comes Lil. Good work, Lilian.”

Betty had been successful in her canoe test, and while waiting for the other girls, was swimming or playing around in shallow water.

“Watch Eloise. There she is, just ready to tip over.” Like a scarlet tanager in black and red, Eloise stood poised in her boat, handing her paddle to her guardian of the row boat, and waiting till the row boat drew off.

“There she goes!” Betty and Cathalina stood in the water watching, and Lilian paused in drawing in her boat to see Eloise perform her spectacular act, now on the edge of her canoe, tipping it, now going over and down, coming up in a jiffy and turning her canoe shoreward.

“Rowing is so much harder work than paddling,” said Cathalina. “I’m glad that I’m learning canoeing, but I wish I were more at home in the water.”

“The only way is to do it a lot, I guess,” said Betty. “Let’s do as much paddling as we can up here and go in for the races at school next year.”

“I don’t believe Mother and Father would let me race,” said Cathalina.

“O, they never get up much speed at Greycliff.”

“Anyway, I’m going to paddle all I can. Will you go out with me this afternoon if they let us?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Wet and smiling, Eloise brought in her canoe. “Do you think I made it, girls?”

“Of course you made it!” cried the generous Cathalina. “I hope I do tomorrow if they have ’em again. If not, some other day. Where’s Hilary, by the way?”

“She and Helen are together somewhere. They said they were coming down for the tests, but must have forgotten it. They passed theirs the other day, you know.”

“O, Cathalina—Cathalina Van Buskirk!” called one of the councillors. The girls ran to get their bath robes and bathing caps, which were draped over the railing at the dock.

“Miss Allen is still sick today; why can’t you take her French class? They can’t afford to lose the time.”

“Why,—I never taught anything in my life.”

“But you have had plenty of private teaching, haven’t you?”

“Yes; shall I do it that way?”

“Certainly. Anybody that can talk French as you can ought to be able to take these little girls through a couple of lessons. Give them some easy conversation and take them over the ground they ought to cover in the reader. If you feel like hearing them recite their verbs, all the better.”

Cathalina’s discouragement over not passing the canoe test was gone and she hurried into her clothes, planning happily just what sort of a conversation she would conduct, delighted to be a good camper and help in something she knew about, if she couldn’t bring in that canoe! “But I’ll do it tomorrow, Hilary,” she told Hilary that night in recounting the day’s exploits, “see if I don’t!” And Cathalina did.

That afternoon there was a hare and hounds chase. During rest hour some of the girls tore paper into pieces, to be dropped here and there for the trail. One of the councillors led the hares, who were to have a good start before the hounds, in charge of another councillor or two, should take up the chase. By the time the chase was ended there were few of the girls who did not know the ins and outs of the pine grove, the rocks, the meadows, the lane, and the trail along the back water.

Of the Greycliff girls, Hilary, Lilian and Virginia were among the hounds, that started after a certain definite time had elapsed. Everybody was talking at once and excitement was growing. As they knew that the start was to be made through the pine grove, the line of hounds headed that way from the club house.

“Here’s the first paper!” shouted Virgie. “Come on! Bow-wow!”

Through the bushes, over the roots and rocks, slipping through the birches in what Hilary called Warblerville, they hurried. It was there that a dainty little redstart sat on the edge of a tiny nest to greet them the first day they wandered about Merrymeeting.

“Mercy! Do I have to climb that rock?” said one of the little girls.

“Over you go,” and with two or three helping hands to boost, up she went, to slide down on the other side.

“Here’s a clear trail,” cried Frances, and the running hounds followed to the middle of a big meadow, only to find that the trail ended there and to return to the place where they had entered the field.

“Hilary, you go that way, Lilian that, and I’ll go this way,” called Frances, “and see if we can find the trail more quickly.” Lilian found it and beckoned to the rest. At the edge of a ravine they paused.

“I bet they never ran down there,” said Virgie. “They’d have to get right out again; let’s go around and pick up the trail.” But her plan was overruled. The whole party climbed or slid down, only to find that Virgie’s surmise was correct and that the hares had probably let one or two of their number fix this blind trail, while the rest of them went on to drop the paper in another direction.

Further on, in a bit of woods, the trail led them in a circle, where again the hounds lost time. Not once did they catch a glimpse of the hares and arrived at camp headquarters to find that they had been in for some time.

“That old engine sounds good to me,” said Virginia, for the water was being pumped from the drilled well and pails of clear, cold water carried down to the dining-room for supper.

Hilary and Lilian were repairing damages and washing dusty faces and hands when Eloise; who had been a hare, came to borrow Betty’s Indian blanket. “I’ll take good care of it, Betty,” she said. “How do I look in it?”—draping it around her shoulders.

“What is up?” asked Hilary.

“Our klondike gives the camp fire tonight and we are going to be Indians. Don’t miss it. Helen’s father sent boxes of the most delicious marshmallows you ever ate. Wasn’t it nice of him?”

“Don’t you want my steamer rug?” inquired Cathalina.

“I think not. If anybody needs one I’ll send her over; thank you, Cathie. May has a duck of a blanket, just a cotton one, such as they make bath robes of, and it is so gay and pretty.”

“I suppose the camp fire will be on Marshmallow Point?”

“Yes; a real ‘Injun’ camp fire, where the Indians used to have them.”

As the girls came down to the point upon the ringing of the bell after supper, a tall, stolid “Indian” met them and waved them to the lower rocks. Behind other rocks Indian head-dresses showed. Presently there appeared a group of dignified Indians, much painted, wearing feathers of a remarkable variety and draped in blankets or what made one think of that civilized garment known as the bath robe. While they posed, one of the girls from Pine Lodge read an account of the early days upon the Kennebec and Merrymeeting Bay when the point was a trading resort and place of meeting for the Indians.

“From the lodges along the Kennebec and from the camp fires of the Androscoggin they have come to make plans for peace upon Merrymeeting Bay. A captive maid is to be returned to the Kennebec lover from whom she was stolen and the wicked kidnapper, of another tribe, is to be sentenced to exile. Behold the council fire!”

Softly from behind the rocks, in the posed Indian moccasins, other figures joined the first group and with them marched in silent procession before the spectators. Then they circled round the camp fire, which was then lit by the chieftain.

After this interesting part of the ceremony had been watched by the audience (though not in silence, for the chief had some difficulty in getting his fire to burn), the other Indians lit their torches (flash-lights) from the camp fire and started a weird dance upon the rocks to the sound of an Indian drum beating in hollow tones. Presently the dance stopped and the Indians sat down in a circle around the chief.

“Bring forth the captive!” called the chief in a sepulchral voice. Then came an Indian maid, well hung with beads, her hands bound, her head bowed, as she walked between two Indian guards. While she knelt before the chief, Lilian’s voice came from the rocks in “From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water”. Like her prototype in the song, the “captive maid was mute”, though she told the girls afterward that she longed to break her bonds, for a bug was crawling up her arm and a mosquito had just bitten her nose.

The girls played well their short Indian drama. The bonds of the captive maid were loosened and she was restored to the arms of her Indian lover, who glared dramatically at his rival, the captive villain who was sentenced to exile and slunk away to his canoe, as pointed out by the old chief:

Far from the smiling Kennebec, Far from thy lodge and tribe, I bid thee go! Thy name shall be A name for jeer and gibe.

The play over at this point, the attractive Indians now brought out the boxes of marshmallows and passed them around to the assembled company who had previously provided themselves with sticks. Afterward came the usual singing of the dear Merrymeeting songs and other favorites; and while Lilian’s voice, never sweeter, floated softly in “By the Waters of Minnetonka,” the waters of the Kennebec rippled past, and the same old moon which had looked upon the real Indians not so many years ago, shone down on the blithe Merrymeeting campers.