CHAPTER IX.
One warm summer evening, office hours being over, Fink said to Anton, "Will you accompany me to-day?
I am going to try a boat that I have just had built." Anton was ready at once; so they jumped into a carriage, and drove to the river.

Fink pointed out a round boat that floated on the water like a pumpkin, and said, in a melancholy tone, "There it is--a perfect horror, I declare! I cut out the model for the builder myself too; I gave him all manner of directions, and this is the sea-gull's egg he has produced." "It is very small," replied Anton, with an uncomfortable foreboding.
"I'll tell you what it is," cried Fink to the builder, who now came forward, respectfully touching his hat, "our deaths will be at your door, for we shall inevitably be drowned in that thing, and it will be owing to your want of sense." "Sir," replied the man, "I have made it exactly according to your directions." "You have, have you ?" continued Fink.

"Well, then, as a punishment, you shall go with us; you must see that it is but fair that we should be drowned together." "No, sir, that I will not do, with so much wind as this," returned the man, decidedly.
"Then stay ashore and make sawdust pap for your children.

Give me the mast and sails." He fitted in the little mast, hoisted and examined the sails, then took them down again, and laid them at the bottom of the boat, threw in a few iron bars as ballast, told Anton where to sit, and, seizing the two oars, struck out from shore.

The pumpkin danced gayly on the water, to the great delight of the builder and his friends, who stood watching it.
"I wanted to show these lazy fellows that it is possible to row a boat like this against the stream," said Fink, replacing the mast, setting the sail, and giving the proper directions to his pupil.