To his credit it is here related that he didn’t get angry. After an instant of surprise and dismay, he accepted the misadventure as an excellent joke and laughed so hard that it required aid from the grinning Tim to get him to his feet. Harmon was rolling about on the ground, convulsed with joy. Laughter cleared the atmosphere considerably. The heat on the river had commenced to make both Pud and Tim somewhat testy. Pud ate his lunch with no more on than his underclothes. The costume was sufficient for the occasion, and Tim envied him until the mosquitoes learned of their arrival and kept Pud so busy slapping that he scarcely had time to eat. Things tasted pretty good, although the tonic would have been more satisfying if it hadn’t been rather more than lukewarm. When the none too hearty repast was finished to the last crumb, Harmon was dispatched first to the launch for the lard-pail that was to do duty as a water bucket and then up the hill in the hot noonday sunshine in search of a well or a spring. The river water was too warm to drink. When Harmon had uncomplainingly departed, the others provided themselves with branches with which to fight the mosquitoes and made themselves comfortable. A few yards away the launch rubbed her sides against a snag and looked, as Pud proudly observed, ‘pretty good.’ The _Kismet_ was twenty-and-a-half feet long and six feet wide, proportions that made less for speed than comfort and safety. She was open all the way from her short forward deck to her even shorter after deck. The engine was placed amidship. A seat extended across the stern and along either side. Two folding canvas stools were also provided. The seats had lockers under them, and there was a locker beneath the stern decking and a space at the bow pretty much taken up by the gasoline tank. The _Kismet_ had been painted buff to the water-line and white above it, but the white had long since turned to drab. There hadn’t been time to repaint the launch, even had Mr. Pringle decided to go to the expense. All that Andy Tremble, in whose boat-yard the _Kismet_ had lain since the previous fall, had been able to do was use a scrubbing brush on the paint and varnish and overhaul the engine. The latter badly needed a coat of enamel, but in lieu of that Andy had doused it well with cylinder oil, and for quite three days it looked fairly decent. After that it went back to its former hues of rusty red and yellow.