ed to be very much interested in the expedition. He told the boys that the water was low in the Champlain Canal, and that the lockmen might not be willing to open the locks for so small a boat; but that they could avoid all dispute by entering the locks at the same time with some one of the many canal-boats that were on their way north. He charged the Whitewing the enormous sum of twenty-five cents for tolls, and gave Harry an important-looking order by which the lockmen were directed to allow the skiff Whitewing, Captain Harry Wilson, to pass through all the locks on the canal.
Thanking the pleasant officer, the boys pushed off. After they had passed the place where the Champlain Canal branches off from the Erie Canal, they were no longer troubled by a crowd of canal-boats, and were able to set the sail again. Unluckily, the mast was just a little too high to pass under the bridges, and at the first bridge which they met they narrowly escaped a capsize—Jim succeeding in getting the mast down only just in time to save it from
