Why would someone tie up a log? Was the log maybe not just a log?
Jonah glanced up at the tracer boys in their tracer canoe, paddling off into the distance. He squinted, trying to think what the underside of the canoe might look like, the part submerged in the water. He remembered something from Boy Scout camp, the year the water sports instructor had gone on and on during orientation about “respecting the history.” The instructor had seemed like a crazy old man, but hadn’t he said something about how Native Americans used to make canoes by burning out the insides of logs? Wouldn’t that mean that the outside of a canoe would still look like a log?
Jonah nudged the side of the log with his foot, rolling it back a bit. Jonah hadn’t pushed hard enough to completely flip the log over, so when it settled back into place, it displaced a huge wave of water. Jonah jumped back too late to avoid getting soaked.
But he’d seen enough. He’d seen that the other side of the log was hollowed out.
“I found the canoe!” he screamed. “I found the canoe!”
“Well, get it over here!” Katherine said. “Before we lose sight of the tracers!”
“You have to help!” Jonah yelled back. “I can’t do everything!”
Which was unfair, because Katherine and Andrea had worked just as hard as Jonah had, pushing John White on the tree branch. But Jonah was wet and tired and hungry and sore, and he knew he was going to have to jump into the water to turn the canoe over.
They were all wet and tired and sore—and irritable—by the time they got the canoe untied, turned over, emptied of water, and loaded with John White and his chest. It took all three of them trying five times before they managed to flip the canoe. They might have succeeded on the fourth try, except that just as they were heaving the canoe up, Katherine said, “Wait a minute! What are we going to use for paddles?”
Jonah lost his grip on the side of the canoe, and it smashed down on his shoulder, knocking him under the water. He surfaced in the air pocket under the canoe.
Oh, yeah, he thought, remembering something else from the crazy water sports instructor at Boy Scout camp. This is how you’re supposed to turn over a canoe. From underneath.
Something was banging against his head, so he grabbed hold of it as he dipped down, kicked to the right, and resurfaced outside the canoe.
“I figured out how we should do this!” he told the girls, lifting his arms high in the air, triumphantly. He decided not to mention that he should have known all along.
“And you found a paddle!” Andrea exclaimed.
Jonah looked at the thing in his hand. It was a carved piece of wood, vaguely paddle-shaped. Huh. Maybe the crazy water sports instructor at Boy Scout camp had said that was the best place to store paddles, under an overturned canoe.
In the end, once all three of them had dived under the canoe and heaved it into the air, they also found another paddle and a wooden object that looked like a rake. They didn’t have time to figure out what that was for—the tracer boys were paddling farther and farther away—so they just tossed the rake into the canoe. Even after they added John White and his chest, there was plenty of room left for all three kids and Dare.
Didn’t the guy at Boy Scout camp say that sometimes these canoes could hold as many as twenty men? Jonah thought. Or was that something that Mrs. Rorshas told us about the Indians? He wasn’t sure. He felt too dizzy and disoriented and exhausted to think clearly. And now he and one of the girls were going to have a paddle a canoe that was supposed to be powered by twenty men?
He decided not to mention that to the girls.
“I’ll take the front,” Jonah offered, stepping into the canoe. “Can one of you push off?”
“I’ll do it,” Andrea volunteered. “Hurry!”
The tracer boys and their canoe were getting smaller and smaller off in the distance.
Once Jonah and Katherine had settled into position, Andrea was surprisingly quick pushing off from the shore.
“Go!” she yelled.
“You paddle—opposite side from me!” Jonah yelled back over his shoulder. He wished there’d been time to review canoeing strategy. “Katherine, tell Andrea—”
“She knows!” Katherine yelled forward, from where she was crouched beside John White and his chest. “She’s already doing it. Just go faster.”
Jonah paddled desperately. The shoulder the canoe had slammed down on ached with every stroke, but it helped when he switched sides.
“Switch!” he yelled back to Andrea.
“She already did!” Katherine yelled forward.
Jonah kept paddling.
At first, it seemed that they were going only fast enough to keep the tracers from lengthening the distance between them. But then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, Jonah realized that they were gaining on the tracers.
Am I paddling that much faster? Jonah wondered, feeling rather proud that he could outpace the muscular tracers. Then he took a quick glance over his shoulder and realized: He wasn’t the one doing such an awesome job paddling. It was Andrea.
She was paddling frantically, her paddle re-entering the water only a split second after she’d pulled it out. And she pulled the paddle through the water at exactly the right angle to create the most force, to propel the canoe forward as quickly as possible.
Oh, yeah, Jonah remembered. Andrea went to camp too. And she ate that food pellet, so she should have more energy than me. Maybe it had steroids in it? Maybe the pellet made Dare peppier, too?
Jonah didn’t have time to follow that thought.
“Good job!” he yelled back to Andrea.
“Just keep paddling!” Katherine screamed at him.