A Cruise in a Converted Canoe.—II. 
BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS. 
Coming out of Secretary Creek, taking care to 
follow the brush buoy channel marks, we headed 
away down big salt Choptank. It was a beauti¬ 
ful afternoon. A slight haze diffused the white 
sunlight, and a faint breeze ruffled the water’s 
surface. It was just such a day as tempts an 
uneasy spirit to leave home and seek the un¬ 
known beyond the horizon. The land fell away 
astern, and when we turned down the river—salt 
bay, really—it seemed as though a new spirit had 
come into the region; and so it had. The spirit 
of “going somewhere” was upon the face of the 
waters, and brushing the lands back that we 
might find new ones. 
Nowhere can one see prettier pictures than 
afloat on the Chesapeake Bay rivers. This is 
not to say the scenes are full of grandeur, or 
always awe-inspiring. What we saw that morn¬ 
ing was a wide, oily surface stirred by catspaws 
of wind. Here and there were little fleets of 
canoes, with sails wrapped around the one or 
two masts, or in hummocks around the masts on 
the seats. Silhouetted against the bright beyond 
were the men, looking like imps in the distance, 
as they spread their arms far apart and drew the 
handles of their tongs together, while at the bot¬ 
tom of the river rake-like jaws closed under 
shells and debris. 
Sight of these men in their boats on all sides 
far and near gives the river an uncanny look, 
especially when a slight mirage seems to raise the 
workers above the water’s surface and holds them 
like day-ghosts in the air. 
The land seemed more distant than on our 
previous trips along the river. The faint haze 
removed the shores to a distance, and where we 
saw the clay and gravel banks, yellow and low, 
the suggestion was not that of solids, but rather 
ethereal, and the trees and bushes and fields were 
still more cloud-like. Ahead of us around each 
bend, beckoned the waterway. Any road, any 
river and any sea is an invitation to roam. 
We stopped long enough to talk to Win 
Murphy who was tonging on a “rock” in mid-‘ 
stream. We saw him from afar, and bore down 
upon him with the noise which an unmuffled 
gasolene motor makes. The sound was heard 
afar, and we saw men a mile away stop their 
tasks and look to see the launch. 
While Rusk talked to Murphy. I took a lesson 
in tonging from Bruce Murphy. Win’s son. 
Bruce is fourteen years old, and he handed me 
a forty pound pair of tongs with one hand. I 
got the 30-inch rakes down to the bottom fifteen 
feet below the surface and spread the two half- 
round handles far apart and began to jounce 
them on the bottom. When the handles were 
together, I hauled up and found one oyster about 
an inch long, and dropped him trying to get the 
jaws over the boat’s side. Three or four times 
trying gave me a little better idea of how it was 
done, and also taught me that the ache comes 
across the small of the back and the strain on 
all the muscles above the waist line and in the 
calves of the leg. Worst of all, the salt water 
comes down on the hands, and when one works 
for days in the winter, when most of the work 
is done, the hands fairly break open. Never¬ 
theless the tonger longs for bitter winds to drive 
the dredges out of the big water. This gives 
him a good market for all that he can get. The 
pretty weather of last winter was good for the 
physical man on the bay, but those who longed 
for money more than for comfort were disap¬ 
pointed. 
We went into Cambridge Creek, and tied at 
the dock. Just ahead of us by the bridge were 
oyster boats unloading, a horse hoisting the iron 
buckets holding a bushel, to the second story of 
the oyster house. These boats were among the 
last to come for the season. Rusk got some 
dime novels, and we laid in a little supply of 
grub. We slept aboard the boat, and next morn¬ 
ing, after getting our mail, started down Chop- 
tank River. 
It happened that there was quite a crowd at 
the Long Dock, waiting for the Baltimore 
steamer. Nothing would do but we must show 
the engine to the crowd. We got to the dock, 
and my green hands at the rope made a shock¬ 
ing display of incapacity. Nevertheless, we got 
tied in, bow and stern, and Rusk began to dilate 
on the merits of the engine. What followed was 
a joy to the spectators. 
We’d had trouble with the motor from time 
to time. It was brand new, and on occasion 
something stuck—some little thing, which had to 
be hunted for and remedied before it would go. 
This time when Rusk tried to make the engine 
go, it started up, fizzed, puffed and stopped. It 
stayed stopped thereafter, for half an hour. 
Rusk sweated over the crank handle, tuned up 
the commutator, shook the wires, tightened 
screws, and all the while kept up a running fire 
of talk. At first the onlookers listened with 
gravity, then they suppressed smiles and finally 
become hilarious. 
“Now, isn’t that a pretty little motor,” Rusk 
began. “Just look at it! She’ll turn up 750 
revolutions a minute when she gets shaken to¬ 
gether a bit. She isn’t quite smooth yet. You 
just ought to have seen her heading into the 
wind up Chootank last Tuesday. She was just 
a-coming-hard wind, and waves rolling good— 
never missed a stroke! You wouldn’t think a 
little tempest in a teapot like that would show 
four horsepower, would you? Just look at her! 
Now I’ll start ’er up and show you something 
pretty!” 
He gave the crank a turn, but nothing hap¬ 
pened. Then he gave it other turns and stopped 
to explain that something was the matter, and 
how difficult it is to run an engine till it’s been 
worn down smooth. But the engine had more 
than common stubbornness that morning. 
“Perhaps the wires are wet,” he said, and ex¬ 
amined them. 
Then he tackled the carburetor, the spark plug, 
the oil holes, and so on down the whole list of 
possible troubles. The spectators grew tired of 
standing and sat down on the string piece, look¬ 
ing down at the engine, feeling funnier, and act¬ 
ing so, every miute until all of a sudden, there 
was a loud explosion, a puff of smoke and a 
rattelty bang of the machinery. Two of the on¬ 
lookers literally threw their heels as high as 
their heads and scrambled off the string piece 
like crabs. The engine was going at last, after 
more trouble than it had given us since the first 
day. Then Rusk tried again and a third time. 
The engine went all right. 
“Cast off!” Rusk said, giving the crank a turn 
for the third time, intending to head away down 
Choptank, but the engine quit again, and we 
reached back to the pier with a rope. Ten 
minutes later the engine started and while I 
yapped at it, and Rusk nursed the engine, the 
SCENE IN CAMBRIDGE CREEK, MARYI.AND. 
