Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/511

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
446
ETHICS OF BOXING AND MANLY SPORT.

moon's reflection, on the contrary, was whiter than it would be on common water, and it crossed the lake like the avenue to a king's palace.

It was five o'clock in the morning, and the eastern sky was paling the moon, when we stood on the edge of the lake, with "A health to thee, Tom Moore!" and then we broke camp.

As our canoes shot out on the lake and we looked back on the camp, we knew that the days and nights spent there could never be forgotten.

We crossed the lake in the teeth of a stiff breeze that made the beautiful brown waves leap at us in play, as if to stay our going. It was still early morning when we reached the mouth of the Feeder, and took our last look at the lake, in memory of which Moseley carried the scene off in his camera.

This last look at the lake, between the trees, showed us a tall cypress with immense roots standing up in the deep water, like a suffering mythological tree, condemned and metamorphosed for offending the gods.

Then we set our faces toward the outer world, or toward "the bank," as our friends "the swampers" would say, and a lovely passage we had, running with the swift current through the shadowy Feeder. We stopped only twice on our way, once to capture a terrapin that was sunning himself on