The Commodore did not reply, for the real object of suggestion was to emphasize one point of superiority of the Red Lake model, after which his own boat and the Cook's were built, over the Chrysalid model affected by the other two mariners. But the Commodore's will was law, and that night the four men slept each in his own canoe, a rubber blanket thrown across a line extending from mast to mast affording protection from dew and possible rain. [Illustration] VIII. THE BEGINNING OF ACADIA. On the morning of this day, two canoeists arose from their nautical couches with that satisfied air which betokens a night of peaceful rest, but the Vice and the Purser arose only after many a premonitory groan, and even then they strongly resembled a couple of rough logs from which a single slab had been sawn, so flattened was one side of each. The Commodore eyed them with manifest satisfaction, called the attention of each of them to the appearance of the other, and exclaimed, "Observe the effect of sleeping in a canoe with ribs and a bottom board! I was curious to see how the experiment would result." "I wish, then," grunted the Vice, as by vicious pinches he sought to restore animation in his flattened side, "I wish--ow--that your devotion to science had prompted you to try the experiment upon yourself, and borrowed my canoe to do it in." "Thanks, thanks," rejoined the Commodore, briskly, "but I had an experiment of the same sort to try in my own boat, which has a smooth concave bottom. I beg you will observe how my outlines preserve their habitual shapeliness." The flat-sided sufferers retired for a bath, and speedily forgot their sorrows. If the morning bath in a city bath-tub is a washer-away of fragments of slumber, and a merry awakener, how much more delightful is the same exercise in an ever-replenishing body of water half a mile wide and hundreds of miles long, enclosed only by blue sky, green trees and brown earth, with no close dining-room and conventional breakfast to be descended to, no morning paper to be read, no vile horse-car to go to business on, nor any hard pavement to tramp over, and no brother man to find fault with, except in that cheerful banter which always comes back to bless the giver. Thus thought the Cook as he stood waist deep in the clear water, and thus he might have continued to think for a long time had his foot not impinged upon the riparian rights of an honest mussel with slightly parted shells. The Commodore had already been out for provisions, and returned rejoicing. "Another proof of the superiority of monarchical institutions," said he. "Instead of the prices we have been accustomed to heretofore, I pay twelve cents a-piece for chickens, ten cents per pound for butter, and three cents per dozen for eggs."