Regatta week opened with glorious weather, long, lazy, sunshiny days ashore, with a crisp breeze scampering out in the open, ruffling up the breast of the old St. Lawrence until
“All the little waves put their white caps on,
White caps, night caps, white caps on,”
and rippled along the margin of Wolfe Island, inspecting the keels of the various racers that lay like idle wooden shuttles ready to weave into their owner's sailing record the coveted word “Winner.”
From headquarters an unusual display of signal flags called general attention to the explanatory details on the bulletin board; the bugler was busy every hour supplementing his erstwhile reveille and “hot potatoes” with various minor blasts that meant much to those who had come to the meet with sport as their uppermost object. The commodore, genial, handsome, omnipresent, assumed his most sportsmanlike gait. The men formerly given to immaculate flannels, gay blazers and nobby canvas shoes were arrayed in stingy bathing suits, and spent the morning scrubbing about their respective floats, oiling canoes, adjusting canvas, polishing center boards and getting into good racing shape. For them the idle days were over and the very men who the week previous had strung to their halyards some impressionable feminine heart from the ladies' camp, supplemented their victories at the close of race week by stringing a half dozen pennants to their main mast, pennants that it took more than holiday wiles and holiday smiles to secure, the winning of which meant muscle and brain and cool, keen sight, and which would proclaim them as honest and honorable athletes and sportsmen the continent through.
There is no prettier contest on turf or tide than a canoe race, and no better man in the world's arena of manly pastimes than he who manages sheet and tiller, or plies the ashen blade, and if indeed American sportsmen may be estimated by those representatives at the A.C.A., the athletic world may well wish that canoe clubs were more numerous and sailing men more plentiful. Nothing could be more unassuming and retiring than the pennant winners: not a single blatant boast, not even a triumphant expression was heard or seen as the commodore awarded each man his laurels. The warmth of good fellowship between contestants which glowed on pennant night into a sincerity that actuated even the defeated to grasp the victor by the hand and congratulate him heartily for gaining “the places where he should have stood,” was a spirit that we would all fain see carried even beyond the radius of the camp fire's blaze.
Some of the prettiest pennants won were carried back to Toronto in the pockets of the proverbially successful Queen City boy, for although many of her best paddlers were not present to compete, still the men representing her were no slur on her waterways. O'Brien, who in the paddling trophy event gave the winner as close a chase as any man cares to have, made the best and closest second I ever witnessed, for which he floats a handsome blue and white silken pennant. Those who met O'Brien were unanimous in their commendation of his square sportsmanship and sunny personality, although he was not in camp long enough to be as generally known and universally courted as Harry Ford, who as third in the trophy distanced the fleet by twenty lengths, and was cheered vociferously when presented with a Union Jack, enveloped therein and carried away by the Toronto contingent. W. H. Sparrow necessarily swells the ranks of those selfish creatures, as a pretty Kingstonian called the racing sailors, who stow their big athletic forms away in a slender craft whose cockpit will not admit of a passenger. Any morning, rain or shine, Sparrow could be seen skimming out from the Toronto camp in his slender little racer the Eel, and with canvas spread eluding, like its namesake, any attempt at capture or overhauling. In fact, there is only one thing in camp that could turn the Eel from her purpose when once her wings caught the wind, that was the bugle call to mess. And because of her indefatigable stickatitiveness her owner sports a handsome silk A.C.A. burgee, for the little craft did her work nobly in unison with the steady hand that sailed her.
Altogether it did one's soul good to see the Toronto boys pull ahead, and it did one's eyes good to visit their camp, to loll about under trees that were as prolific of mirrors as the forest of Arden was of poems, to look skyward and see that big familiar white burgee with its scarlet ring flapping in the breeze; to look earthward and see a small tent in the door of which sat the picturesque artist of one of the great dailies, his tam-o'-shanter tipped over one ear, his pen and pencil ever busy, too much so in this ideal place of idlers, for he soon became noted far and near as an example of journalistic enterprise*, to look seaward and catch a glimpse of Mr. Tyson scurrying afar with a pair of ladies tucked away in that remarkable prow of his which he tells the hardened interviewer is a native of the Orient; to look landward and see his tent *floating numerous little flags all bearing the significant words “Single Tax.” And to know that laced up securely inside is the inevitable bag of prunes and a few of Henry George's choicest literary plums.
But in spite of our gallant boys and their truly sincere work we could not succeed in keeping the championship sailing trophy in Canada this year; twice has Ford Jones defended it against America and now it goes again to the Vespers of Lowell, Mass.
Notwithstanding their defeat there was not a Canadian who did not shout himself hoarse when young Paul Butler, son of the immortal old General, ran first between the flags, for next to being victor is the pleasure of defeat by a noble rival, and if ever a man proved himself a grand sportsman he was the winner of the trophy of 93. His genial, though retiring disposition, his open hospitality, his apparent worship of sail and paddle endeared him to every man as few aliens on Canadian soil could hope to do again, and when the magnificent silver trophy with A.C.A. colors was presented and the modest though proud recipient accepted his honors so bashfully, the cheers were deafening and testified to the good will of every canoeist that witnessed the race.
Butler's craft is a little beauty; she is built of Spanish cedar and decked with a beautiful curled basswood that is polished as smoothly as a piano. Her fittings are of brass, and nowhere is her wood more than an eighth of an inch thick. That such a craft can carry a rig of 180 feet of canvas is a marvel, but Butler accomplished it in pretty fashion and when weather is heavy he does some of the most remarkable hyking ever seen. Light in weight, he has built the heaviest hyking seat on record, and to balance his canvas he frequently hykes four or five inches clear of his gunwale, a wonderful though essential feat, considering the expanse of sail he lifts. The only man who hoists more canvas than Butler is Kenneth Cameron of the Cataraqui Club, Kingston. Mr. Cameron's smallest outfit is 170 feet, his largest 210 feet, his foresail containing about twice the stuff in his mizzen. Carrying a rig of these dimensions means a good deal to any man, but when it became known that Cameron had lost an arm in a shooting accident some few years ago, and had still the pluck and courage to sail a canoe in that dress, there was nothing in the entire camp good enough for his many admirers to offer him.
But the neatest bit of work done at the regatta was in the record combine race. The record divided its laurel wreath for the first time, the tie being between Charlie Archibald of Montreal and George Douglas of Newark. Douglas has the reputation of being the daintiest sailor in America and Archibald bids fair to be a second Ford Jones. The Cricket, in which Douglas won the combined, is a lovely bit of building in cedar with mahogany decks, and a rare contrivance running crossways amidships, which her owner calls a “cleat board.” It has a parallel row of cleats upon which every rope in the gearing is secured, and to this invention Mr. Douglas owes his reputation of coming in from a combined without a single tangle. It is a difficult matter to make a triangle of three-quarter-mile distances between each buoy, paddling one leg, sailing the next, paddling the next, and so on, with a lowering of canvas, every alternate buoy, and a raising of sails at the “sandwich” buoy. Most men get hopelessly snarled and come in with their sheets and halyards like a crazy quilt, but Douglas beaches his bow with everything in apple-pie order, and because he is methodical he can afford to do graceful work, and a prettier thing was never seen than the little Cricket slipping noiselessly among the islands and bays that fret the head waters of the St. Lawrence, from where her owner carried seven pennants, the best endorsation a racing man can have of his ability, and let it be whispered that if pennants were presented for popularity Mr. Douglas would have tripled his prizes—at least so said the racing men, and so echoed many voices from the ladies' camp.
But all things end, and the saddest day of the summer is the one wherein you strike camp—no more sweet cool mornings, when you dash down to the blue waters for your early dip; no more jolly breakfasts up in the big mess tent, followed by that delicious morning paddle you looked forward to from the moment you awakened; no more drifting out over the lagoons where the yellow fields lie a margin and a sky-line for your sails to fret; no more of that mad excitement when races are called and your favorite stands to win; no more purple evenings that fade into dusk that the lurid camp fire colors, and that echo the rollicking songs and laughter of the assembled camper; no more slipping away from the glare and crackle of the flame to your dreamy little canoe that rocks itself in the moonlight on the waves until you lie,
Wind-blown and wave-caressed until
Your restless pulse grows still.
But in the after days you will know that the old A.C.A. camp ground is dearer, more beautiful to you than you thought it was, even when you called it “home” in those yellow August days of 93.