content with giving us our personal fill; into every crevice of our firkin he packed a pellet of future indigestion. Besides this result of foraging, we took the hint from a visible cow that milk might be had. Of this also the ex-barkeeper served us out galore, sighing that it was not the punch of his metropolitan days. We put our milk in our teapot, and thus, with all the ravages of the past made good, we launched again upon Chesuncook.
Chesuncook, according to its quality of lake, had no aid to give us with current. Paddling all a hot August midday over slothful water would be tame, day-laborer’s work. But there was a breeze. Good! Come, kind Zephyr, fill our red blanket-sail! Cancut’s blanket in the bow became a substitute for Cancut’s paddle in the stem. We swept along before the wind, unsteadily, over Lake Chesuncook, at sea in a bowl, — “rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard,” in our keelless craft. Zephyr only followed us, mild as he was strong, and strong as he was mild. Had he been puffy, it would have been all over with us. But the breeze only sang about our way, and shook the water out of sunny calm. Katahdin to the north, a fair blue pyramid, lifted higher and stooped forward more imminent, yet still so many leagues away that his features were undefined, and the gray of his scalp undistinguishable from the green of his beard of forest. Every mile, however, as we slid drowsily over the hot lake, proved more and more that we were not befooled, — Iglesias by memory, and I by anticipation.
