Oh, boy, wasn’t I excited. I swam around it washing it off with my scout jacket, then I bailed the little dug out part out with my scout hat. It wasn’t so black when I got it all cleaned off. It was kind of chocolate color and I knew it must be very old, because cedar turns that color after a long time. You learn that in Woodcraft. It was all made out of one piece and the place where you sit was just hollowed out—about big enough for one person. Then I got inside and it was crankier than a racing shell. You had to sit up straight like a little tin soldier to keep it from tipping—it was one tippicanoe, you can bet. I fell out and had to roll it over and bail it out two or three times. At last I got the hang of it and I pushed it in the marshes a little way so it wouldn’t drift up stream. There was a regular creek there now, good and wide and deep, and the water was coming up like a parade. Then I pulled a lot of reeds and bound them together with swamp grass. That was a funny kind of a paddle I guess, but it was better than nothing and anyway I decided to wait till the tide was at flood and then paddle back with it. That would be a cinch. So then I sat in the dug-out and just waited for the tide to come up. The dug-out stayed where it was on account of being pushed in among the reeds and oh, jiminety, it was nice sitting there. I thought maybe the creek would empty out again into Bridgeboro River and I could tie up there and go home. But I had a big surprise waiting for me, you can bet. It was about nine o’clock in the morning when I started on that crazy trail and it was about five o’clock in the afternoon when the tide began to turn and go back. All the while I was sitting there waiting I thought about the Indian that owned that canoe. Maybe his bones were down underneath there, I thought. Ugh! I’d like to see them. No, I wouldn’t. Maybe he was on his way to a pow-wow, hey? Well, after a while when the tide turned I started paddling down. A little water came through a couple of deep cracks, but not much and I sopped it up with my hat. But oh, jingoes, I never had to sit up so straight in school (not even when the principal came through the class-room) as I did in that cranky old log with a hole in it. And oh, you would have chucked a couple of chuckles if you’d seen me guiding my Indian bark with a bunch of reeds. Honest, they looked like a street sweeper’s broom. After a while the creek began to get wider and then I could see far ahead of me the roof of a house. Then, all of a sudden, I heard somebody shout. “Don’t bother to plug the hole up, leave it the way it is, so if the water comes in, it can get out again.” Then I heard a voice shout, “You’re crazy!” and I knew it was the fellows jollying Pee-wee Harris and they were talking about a hole in the boat, because that was the roof I saw. So then I knew I was coming out into Dutch Creek right where it passes Little Valley.