Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.) -- Juvenile fiction; Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Camps -- Juvenile fiction
They hitched the horses to the rope's end and as the beasts plunged
through the yielding marsh the boat came reeling and lurching toward the
road. Here they laid planks and rollers and jacked her across. This was
not so much a matter of brute strength as of skill. The two men with the
aid of the Stanton chauffeur were able, with props of the right length,
to keep the _Good Turn_ on an even keel, while the boys removed and
replaced the rollers. It was interesting to see how the bulky hull could
be moved several hundred feet, guided and urged across a road and
retarded upon the down grade to the river by two or three men who knew
just how to do it.
Cautiously the rollers were retarded with obstructing sticks, as the
men, balancing the hull upright, let her slowly down the slope into the
water. Pee-wee stood upon the road holding the rope's end and a thrill
went through him when he felt the rocking and bobbing of the boat as it
regained its wonted home, and at last floated freely in the water.
"Hang on to that, youngster," called one of the men. "She's where she
can do as she likes now."
As the _Good Turn_, free at last from prosaic rollers and plank tracks,
rolled easily in the swell, pulling gently upon the rope which the
excited Pee-wee held, it seemed that she must be as pleased as her new
owners were, at finding herself once more in her natural home. How
graceful and beautiful she looked now, in the dying light! There is
nothing so clumsy looking as a boat on shore. To one who has seen a
craft "laid up," it is hardly recognizable when launched.
"Well, there ye are," said one of the men, "an' 'tain't dark yet
neither. You can move 'er by pullin' one finger now, hey? She looks
mighty nat'ral, don't she, Bill? Remember when we trucked her up from
the freight station and dumped her in three year ago? She was the
_Nymph_ then. Gol, how happy that kid was--you remember, Bill? I'll tell
_you_ kids now what I told him then--told him right in front of his
father; I says, 'Harry, you remember she's human and treat her as such,'
that's what I says ter him. _You_ remember, Bill."
Roy noticed that the girl had strolled away and was standing in the
gathering darkness a few yards distant, gazing at the boat. The clumsy
looking hull, in which the boys had taken refuge, seemed trim and
graceful now, and Roy was reminded of the fairy story of the ugly
duckling, who was really a swan, but whose wondrous beauty was
unappreciated until it found itself among its own kindred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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