Those
of Lake Michigan, however, were quite long enough for a bark canoe,
and glad enough were both Margery and Dorothy when they found their
two little vessels lashed together, and wearing an air of more
stability than was common to them. Le Bourdon's sail was first
spread, and it produced an immediate relief from the washing of the
waves. The drift of a bark canoe, in a smart blow, is considerable,
it having no hold on the water to resist it; but our adventurers
fairly flew as soon as the cotton cloth was opened. The wind being
exactly south, by steering due north, or dead before it, it was
found possible to carry the sail in the other canoe, borne out on
the opposite side; and from the moment that was opened, all the
difficulty was reduced to steering so "small," as seamen term it, as
to prevent one or the other of the lugs from jibing. Had this
occurred, however, no very serious consequences would have followed,
the precaution taken of lashing the craft together rendering
capsizing next to impossible.
The Kalamazoo and its mouth were soon far behind, and le Bourdon no
longer felt the least apprehension of the savages left in it.
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