“If you hadn’t come just when you did,” he remarked solemnly, “I should have been devoured by sharks.  Already I had noticed a black fin circling about the island—­I mean a Lean, black fin,—­or is it a low, rakish, black fin?  No; that’s a craft,—­a low, rakish, black craft.  It was a Lean, black fin—­”

Captain Bannister gave a great snort of disgust.

“Sharks!” he exclaimed, “there aint no sharks in this river!”

“No?  Well, probably you are more familiar with it than I am.”

“Guess I ought to know something ’bout it,” the Captain returned; “I’ve been on it longer than most folks ’round here.”

“On it longer, no doubt,” said the young man, politely, “but have you gone into it any deeper than I?”

The Captain smiled.

“Well, no; I guess not.  You’ve got me there, all right.”

The stranger perched himself on the house, and there was a moment’s silence until the Captain spoke again.

“But how in the nation did yer git on that there sand-bar, anyway?  Where’d yer come from?”

“I came from—­what was the name of that place where I got off the train?  I thought I’d remember it,—­I remembered it by gammon and spinach—­yes, that’s it,—­it’s in that, somehow—­”

’ Rowley, Powley, Gammon and Spinach,—­Heighho! says Anthony—­’”

“Rowley!” we all exclaimed.

“That’s it! that’s it!  Rowley.  Think of living at a place so famous as that!  It sounds like great fun.  But nobody does live there.  When I got off the train there was only one man in sight, and he was standing on a wharf watching a steamboat go up the river, or down the river, or whatever it is.  That was my boat,—­I was going to Duck Island in her.  But she’d gone, and the man said he’d let me take a canoe, for half a dollar, and I thought that was very trusting of him, for how did he know I’d ever bring it back?  But he said I could leave it with a man named Pike, who lives on Little Duck Island, and he’d get it tomorrow.  So I gave him half a dollar, and then I came away in the canoe.  Aren’t they wabbly?  I never was in one before.”

“Did you paddle down here in a canoe?  And you’d never been in one before?”

“Yes.  That is, I didn’t do much with the paddle,—­except push off from the bank every now and then.  The canoe seemed to come along pretty well.  How that river does twist!  And it’s very narrow,—­I should think the steamboat would stick.”

The Captain opened his mouth helplessly, once or twice.

“Gosh sakes!” he said, “you warn’t in no river.  You was in Pingree’s Crik, or you wouldn’t have got down here.”

“I thought it seemed pretty narrow.  But when I got out here—­round that corner—­and came out where it’s so much broader, I couldn’t make the canoe go at all, except backwards.  The front end of her kept swinging round, for the river was running the wrong way.  At last I ran right up on that island, and then I got out, for my foot had gone to sleep.  You see I hadn’t dared to move, the canoe wabbled so.  And then I went to look at some critters that were crawling around in the water,—­they looked like tennis-racquets, only their tails weren’t quite big enough—­”