"And you won't advance supplies, sir?" asked the young man, whitening.
"Didn't I tell you it was a hare-brained scheme? Why, boy, don't you know that without papers you are liable to be captured as a pirate, and how do I know you do not intend to become one?" said the doctor, looking very fierce and nodding his head.
"Well, Doctor," shouted the enraged Yankee, "you may keep your paltry rigging. You carry matters with a high hand now, but it won't last always. Remember, sir, I have an uncle in the States, that, rich as you are, is able to buy your great company out and several more such. He'll come along here some day when you ain't thinking of him and send you all packing."
"Tut, tut, tut!" cried the doctor, reddening. "I am glad to hear so rich a man as your uncle is coming to this country. Who is it, Mr. Wood? What is his name, Mr. Wood? I should like to know him, Mr. Wood."
"Why, they call him Uncle Sam, and he 's liable to come out here looking after us fellows most any day," retorted the angry American, making a bee-line for the gate.
"The persistency of these Americans is amazing," said the doctor, as he watched the retreating figure. " If I tell my Canadians to stop, they stop, but these Americans keep right on."
And the Americans did keep on. On Wapato Island they found material fit for a keel and a frame of swamp white oak. They grubbed up red fir roots for knees, put up beams of red fir timber, and planked their boat with cedar dressed by hand. Parrish, the mission blacksmith, made the spikes and irons.
