It was the brightest of suns that attacked Josh Smith's eyes as he stepped out of his hotel. As he hesitated to allow his vision to return, his German waiter came bustling out. The narrowest of collisions was avoided with the considerable agility of those born with the skills of restaurant service. The waiter held a large basket, which was taken from his hands by the smiling Mr. Smith.

"It's a good day to be a hero, hmmm?"

The waiter merely nodded at Mr. Smith and went back inside. In the distance, musical instruments could be heard tuning up. Yes, quite a day to be a hero, the hotel owner thought. He returned a few waves from passers-by already walking to the Mariposa Belle.

"What might you have in that basket, Mr. Smith?" asked Hussell the newspaper editor. His head bent forward to try and look beneath the covering cloth.

The smile on Mr. Smith's face could be seen all the way down to the wharf. "Surprises, Mr. Hussell. Surprises." Hussell rubbed his stomach in delight and continued on. Behind Mr. Smith, his waiter and bartender emerged from the quiet hotel.

"We're ready, sir." Mr. Smith allowed himself one peek into the other basket that the waiter brought out with him. His smile outshone the sun, it seemed.

The flags on the Mariposa Belle hung rather limply, since on such a clear day, wind isn't allowed. As Mr. Smith walked down the hill, the people milling around the steamboat seemed to look like bees around a hive. He almost wished that someone would fall into Lake Wissanotti, and then there would be excitement, men running to and fro, women's hands flying to their faces in fright, and at least ten Knights of Pythias would jump in after the poor sod. Hussell could write about the heroism of the Knights, and the town would talk about it for seven days and seven nights in the barbershop and the caff and the street corners where people gather like iron filings to a magnet.

As Mr. Smith got closer to the wharf, various townspeople would come by and lend their services, if they could just see what was in the basket, perhaps Mr. Smith needed a hand? The hotelier would just shine his smile on them, and they would smile back, unsure, before finally deciding that it would be better to get down to the wharf before the Mariposa Belle left.

The boat's whistle blew long and clear, and Mr. Smith knew that it was seven o'clock sharp. On the posters the advertising copy read: "Boat leaves at seven sharp." He was not worried, however; in this town, it is not a habit to be fashionably late, but practically a law. At last he reached the Mariposa Belle, and it was a majestic sight. It always amazed Mr. Smith how many people could fit on such a boat. Cattle, he thought, cattle that is herded this way and that, mindlessly plodding on... and he stopped thinking about it because he would just get upset.

Mr. Smith had a moment of quiet panic when he saw all the Knights of Pythias wearing blue ribbons; was I wearing mine? A quick look down settled his nerves. Of course it was ironic for a man such as himself to be wearing a ribbon for temperance, but appearances must be kept up. With Mr. Smith leading the way, the hotel trio quickly went to the bottom deck and hid their weighty cargo.

"Appearances, gentlemen," he said in a rather jovial tone, and went back up. He almost ran into several people rushing from one end of the ship to the other. While heading for his place at the front, he allowed himself to be a little irritated at the behaviour of his community companions. They would rush to a spot on one deck, and then become worried that there might be a better spot somewhere else, and so they run for several minutes. Like chickens with their heads cut off, he thought, but at least the chickens have sense enough to die. He frowned. Perhaps that was a little too much. There are more good people here than bad, but there was no way he was going to feel guilty about using these people. It was fun, really, to try and make people do things a certain way. Like discovering what people would do if a certain riverboat decided to stop floating.

Mr. Smith sat in his deck chair, nodding to both Mullins and Duff the bankers. Mr. Gingham was sitting on a stool that looked to be rather uncomfortable.

"Yes," said Mr. Gingham, gesturing at the shore as if he owned it, "I know the lake well, very well. I've been pretty much all over it in my time."

"Canoeing?" asked Duff in a rather disinterested tone.

"No," replied Mr. Gingham, "not in a canoe." He appeared not to notice the curious looks he received.

"Sailing, I suppose," said Mullins.

"No," said Mr. Gingham. "I don't understand it."

That makes two of us, thought Mr. Smith. "I never knowed that you went on to the water at all, Gol."

"Ah, not now," explained Mr. Gingham; "it was years ago, the first summer I came to Mariposa. I was on the water practically all day. Nothing like it to give a man an appetite and keep him in shape." He began to sit back but then realized he was sitting on a stool, just barely preventing himself from falling right off.

"Was you camping?" asked Mr. Smith.

"We camped at night," assented the undertaker, "but we put in practically the whole day on the water. You see we were after a party that had come up here from the city on his vacation and gone out in a sailing canoe. We were dragging. We were up every morning at sunrise, lit a fire on the beach and cooked breakfast, and then we'd light our pipes and be off with the net for a whole day. It's a great life," finished the undertaker, staring off into the distance.

"Did you get him?" asked Duff in a much more interested tone.

The undertaker continued to stare for a few seconds before replying. "We did... down in the reeds past Horseshoe Point. But it was no use. He turned blue on me right away." And with that, he seemed to collapse on himself, and silence ruled the deck.

Such interesting lives we lead. And Mr. Smith wondered when they were going to sink.

As the Mariposa Belle travelled closer to their destination of Indian's Island, Mr. Smith passed the time by playing poker with a couple of Duff's juniors from the bank. More than once, the boys commented that it was lucky that they had no money that day, because otherwise they would have lost it anyway. Dr. Gallagher came around and presented the history lesson for the day: how Champlain crossed the rock divide. Having heard this lecture more than once before, Mr. Smith gave the good doctor a pitying smile.

"You know, I do think I crossed a worse one way up north past the Wahnipitae river, and the flies were Hades." He then turned back to the poker game, and slapped the hand of one of the juniors, who was trying to peek at the top card in the deck.

Indian's Island is a country all to itself; trees and rocks and vines and kids that run and women that gossip and men that gossip, except that when men do it, it's called political discussion. A picnic spread itself like a virus across the island, and pretty soon everyone was eating sandwiches and drinking lager. Various people got up and held forth on enough subjects to make the most avid listener wish for earplugs. Mr. Smith refrained from saying anything, and preferred to stand by the kegs on the pine logs, the cosy confines of the trees making for a useful hideout. The picnic ended with Judge Pepperleigh making wondrous and fantastic statements about Conservative politics, and everyone agreed that it was time to go.

It was twenty miles back to Mariposa when the steamer left Indian's Island, and Mr. Smith always liked the ride back better. Everyone had settled down into a rather comatose existence, and now the hotelier could sit back and enjoy the breeze that played with the curves on his cheeks. Still, though, he wasn't completely relaxed until George Duff went up to Dr. Gallagher and asked him if the boat wasn't sinking, and of course Mr. Smith could hear every word, and the smile on his face grew like the lies of a child. For the first time, while everyone around him started talking about whether the Mariposa Belle could indeed be sinking, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to remember.

Mr. Smith put two beers in front of a small man with a top hat that told everyone in the room that he was definitely not from around Mariposa. The man's suit was ill-fitting, however, and the ferret-like look of his face meant that he sat alone. But Mr. Smith sat beside him anyway.

"Well, neighbour, strangers are a welcome surprise here in Mariposa." The man looked up from his drink when Mr. Smith spoke and smiled weakly.

"Thank you, sir." The stranger's voice was raspy, as if his throat had met many lagers in his lifetime.

Mr. Smith watched the stranger as he explained how he was from the government, and that he was in town to inspect the Mariposa Belle. The hotelier could tell from what he saw that this man had done this job for a living too long; the stranger had lived in too many inns and hotels, and sat in too many barstools. But as the stranger, who was named Mr. Denison, talked in more detail about what he inspected, Mr. Smith had himself a truly wondrous idea. He called the bartender over, and told his man that Mr. Denison was to have as many lagers as he wanted. Wide-eyed, the inspector asked what he had done to deserve such kindness.

"It ain't so much what you have done, but who you are, Mr. Denison." And with that, the inspector drank many lagers and finished the night in his hotel room, sleeping the heavy sleep of the alcoholic. The next morning, Mr. Denison woke up with a morning sickness and a headache slightly larger than Lake Wissanotti. When Mr. Smith offered to perform the inspection himself, the inspector readily agreed, and Mr. Smith had managed to fool not just anybody, but a city person.

As Mr. Smith finished recalling his genius, the fool Mullins interrupted him.

"I cannot believe that the Mariposa Belle is sinking. This has never happened to me before. I hope that I should not die." He said this last in a hopeful pride.

Mr. Smith smiled. "I remember once having a steamer sink on me on Lake Nipissing. Then another bigger steamer on Lake Abbitibbi, that was a test, let me tell you." Mullins looked fearfully at the water, and then back at Mr. Smith's amused face. The hotelier's calmness seemed to unnerve the banker, and he walked hurriedly towards where the lifeboats were being lowered.

The cry of "women and children first" could be clearly heard, and that was right and good, but Mr. Smith could see that it was getting harder for the men to keep their distance. Mullins, in particular, was getting rather anxious, and Mr. Smith couldn't help but want to have a little fun.

As the third boat was being lowered, and Mullins was watching it go down with an obvious longing, Mr. Smith came up to him. "You will be on the next boat?"

Mullins nodded.

"How would you like to make a small wager?" asked Mr. Smith, and Mullins frowned. "I say that I will be home in Mariposa before you can walk 'round the shores."

The banker barked out a laugh, and said, "Done, my good man. For...?"

"Twenty-five dollars, Mr. Mullins. And you can pay me when you get back."

But now the fourth boat was ready, and they shook hands. They wished each other luck, and the man P.T. Barnum always knew was born every minute left the Mariposa Belle smiling.

Yet his smile could not reach the smile of Mr. Smith. The hotelier motioned to his German waiter, and a few seconds later, Mr. Smith was carrying a mallet in his left hand and a bundle of marline in the other. There were no questioning glances, of course; these were Mariposans, who could not even conceive of something planned out and organized. And so it was just assumed that Mr. Smith left something below, and that is where he and his two helpers headed.

"We might need some help down here," said Mr. Smith, knee-deep in water that was not getting any warmer. He nodded at the bartender. "See who you can find to help us with the pump." His man fairly leaped up the stairs. The waiter brought in both baskets and set them by the boiler, removing the cloth. No sandwiches here; the fire's embers were slowly cooling, but were still warm enough to light the hemlock that was tossed from the basket to the boiler.

Cheers could be heard from above, but they were quickly drowned out by the sound of clumping boots. When the party of elephants arrived, Mr. Smith's smile grew wider.

"It is certainly appropriate that the famous band of Mariposa should come out to help us this fine afternoon! Take them to the hand-pump in the bow! We'll get this beast moving yet!" The bandsmen followed the bartender with pathetic eagerness, thankful that someone had given them something to do.

If only these country bumpkins could think for themselves... but then I would not become a hero, would I? The cranking sound from the hand-pump soon gave way to a lowering of the waterline, and only a few minutes later, Mr. Smith was down on his knees with the mallet and marline, plugging the timber seams. Mr. Denison had said that the designers of this steamboat had left these seams there to ensure constant inspection of the boat. It seemed to Mr. Smith that they had another purpose; to create a little excitement for a group of people that needed excitement so that they could say that the city has nothing on Mariposa. How many steamboats sink by the city? How many cities have a caff like Mr. Smith's? How many fools could one gather in a town?

It was work, but it was work that was over in ten minutes, and the boat began to spring up again. The weight of over half the passengers gone, and most of the water pumped out, it was time to go home.

Perhaps it was that the Mariposa Belle was just a steamship, or maybe it was that the captain, Christie Johnson, was from Mariposa and had no idea. But Mr. Smith was not surprised to discover that the captain had left the ship with the third boat-load. Desertion of his ship, he thought. I'll bet he has never heard of staying on a sinking ship until the last man had left. This only helped Mr. Smith's plans, and it was inevitable that the remaining passengers would look to Mr. Smith, who had done immeasurable heroics in saving the ship, to sail the Mariposa Belle home.

Mr. Smith allowed himself to feel some pleasure in noting the surprised expressions on the faces of those on the shore. "Raises, gentlemen, for the both of you." He was referring to his two employees, who were enjoying the view from the pilothouse. Mr. Smith actually did not intend to give them raises, since he figured that their impending notoriety would make them forget what he had said. But he thought it was a worthwhile gesture.

As they approached the dock, the Mariposa band surprised everyone by striking into the national anthem, and the resounding chorus of "O Canada" could be heard 'round the shores. Was that a tear in Mr. Smith's eye? The bartender sang furiously along, and the waiter merely stood proud at the window. The following months would be filled with parlour discussions and caff conversations about the heroism of Mr. Smith, and the hotelier would have been pleased to know that while being an outsider, he was regarded very highly, perhaps higher than the Pope.

But then again, Mr. Smith was not aiming that high.

Note: When necessary, the dialogue was taken directly from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock. This was done only when the events in the above story corresponded to the events in Leacock's novel, and instead of inventing new dialogue, I simply used the original dialogue.

I hope he doesn't mind.

(based on Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town)