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Show 76 That started us laughing. We laughed so hard we could not row. We just rolled around the deck holding our sides and gasping for breath. When we looked at each other we started laughing again. "What's so funny?" a passing boatman called. 'We were laughing too hard to answer. He got down on his stomach and tried to look under his boat. We screamed with laughter. "Fool kids," he yelled. "You're scaring the fish!" We tried our utmost to go North. We rowed, and we poled, and I stood for hours at the stern working the steering oar. When a wind came up, we raised sail and were blown back almost where we started from. Other stampeders, we noticed, were adding centerboards to their boats. And we did the same. We cut a board from our deck planks and slipped it between the middle logs near the center. It could be pulled up or down according to the depth of the water. At last, we were headed North. It was evening by this time, however, and when we spotted a sandy beach in a sheltered cove, we steered the raft toward it. We ended up about a mile farther down in a glacier mud deposit. We sloshed ashore, sinking to our boot tops, and were met by black swarms of mosquitoes. We sloshed back to the raft, the mosquitoes in pursuit. |