Paddling under Palmettos — page 155: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

148 Paddling Under Palmettos. should get lost. The channel was blind at times, but Ned knew where he was heading, and the boys never once found him to make a serious mistake. By nature Ned was jolly, and sitting in his boat or at the camp-fire, his voice—he had a good one, too, a baritone—could often be heard raised in some fa- vorite song. Most of those he sung were of the sea, but now and then he tuned up on some really pathetic bal- lad. Archie wondered when he listened to some of these whether Ned had not left some fair girl at home. Dick, too, warmed up under the genial glow of the camp-fire and once in a while gave the com- pany some shanty sailor song that in times past he had learned from an old tar, Captain Kendall, or “Tarpon,” with whom he had made a canoe cruise from the lakes down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and along the gulf to Pensacola. Thus it will be seen that where circumstances al- _», lowed of their sitting around a fire they passed r very enjoyable evening. Dick’s fears were not well founded, for at three (E@NMIELOOKO KS (€(@) &