122 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



boots were still suspended from tlie limb. The 

 paddle and two oars had followed suit, and lay- 

 cosily amid the branches, while John, poising 

 himself dexterously on the trunk of a fallen 

 spruce, red in the face and vexed at his want of 

 success, was whirling the frying-pan over his 

 head, in the very act of letting it drive at the 

 boots. 



" Go in, John ! " I shouted, seizing hold of the 

 gridiron with one hand and a bag of bullets with 

 the other, while tears stood in my eyes from very 

 laughter ; " when we 've got all the rest of the 

 baggage up in that hemlock, I '11 pass up the boat, 

 and we '11 make a camp." 



The last words were barely off my lips, when 

 John, having succeeded in getting a firm footing, 

 as he thought, on the slippery bark, threw aU his 

 strength into the cast, and away the big iron pan 

 went whizzing up through the branches. But, 

 alas for human calculation ! The rotten bark 

 under his feet, rent by the sudden pressure as he 

 pitched the cumbrous missile upward, parted from 

 the smooth wood, and John, with a mighty thump 

 which seemed almost to snap his head off, came 

 dowTi upon the trunk ; while the frying-pan, gyrat- 

 ing like a broken-winged bird, landed rods away 

 in the marsh. By this time John's blood was up, 

 and the bombardment began in earnest. The first 

 thing he laid his hand on was the coffee-pot. I 



