Blaise, who was still ahead, did not answer. He was closely scanning the rock wall on either side. A moment later, he paused and gave a little grunt of interest or satisfaction.
“What is it?” Hugh asked.
Blaise took another step forward, and pointed to the right hand wall. A narrow fissure extended from top to bottom. So narrow was the crack that Hugh rather doubted whether he could squeeze into it.
“I will go first, I am smaller,” Blaise suggested. “If I cannot go through, we shall know that no man has been in there.”
Slender and lithe, Blaise found that he could wriggle his way through without much difficulty. The heavier, broader-shouldered Hugh found the task less easy. He had to go sidewise and for a moment he thought he should stick fast, but he managed to squeeze past the narrowest spot, to find himself in an almost round hollow. This hole or pit in the outer ridge was perhaps twenty feet in diameter with abrupt rock walls and a floor of boulders and pebbles, among which grew a few hardy shrubs. It was open to the sky and ringed at the top with shrubby growth. Hugh glanced about him with a keen sense of disappointment. Surely the furs were not in this place.
Blaise, on the other side of a scraggly ninebark bush, seemed to be examining a pile of boulders and rock fragments. The older boy rounded the bush, and disappointment gave way to excitement. By what agency had those stones been heaped in that particular spot? They had not fallen from the wall beyond. The pit had no opening through which waves could wash. Had that heap been put together by the hand of man? Was it indeed a cache?
Without a word spoken, the two lads set about demolishing the stone pile. One after another they lifted each stone and threw it aside. As he rolled away one of the larger boulders, Hugh could not restrain a little cry. A bit of withered cedar had come to light. With eager energy he flung away the remaining stones. There lay revealed a heap of something covered with cedar branches, the flat sprays, withered but still aromatic, woven together closely to form a tight and waterproof covering. Over and around them, the stones had been heaped to conceal every sprig.
With flying fingers, the boys pulled the sprays apart. There were the bales of furs each in a skin wrapper. The brothers had found the hidden cache and their inheritance. Both lads were surprised at the number of the bales. If the pelts were of good quality, no mean sum would be realized by their sale. They would well repay in gold for all the long search. Yet, to do the boys justice, neither was thinking just then of the worth of the pelts. Their feeling was rather of satisfaction that they were really carrying out their father’s last command. The long and difficult search was over, and they had not failed in it.
They lifted the packages from a platform of poles resting on stones. The whole cache had been cleverly constructed. No animal could tear apart the bales, and, even in the severest storm, no water could reach them. Over them the branches had formed a roof strong enough to keep the top stones from pressing too heavily upon the furs.
“But where is the packet?” cried Hugh. “It must be inside one of the bales, but which one I wonder.”
“I think it is this one,” Blaise replied.
The package he was examining seemed to be just like the others, except that into the rawhide thong that bound it had been twisted a bit of scarlet wool ravelled from a cap or sash. Blaise would have untied the thong, but the impatient Hugh cut it, and stripped off the wrapping. The bale contained otter skins of fine quality. Between two of the pelts was a small, flat packet. It was tied with a bit of cedar cord and sealed with a blotch of pitch into which had been pressed the seal of the ring Hugh now wore.
“Shall we open this here and now, Blaise?” Hugh asked.
“That is for you to say, my brother. You are the elder.”
“Then I think we had best open it at once.”
Hugh broke the seal and was about to untie the cord, when from somewhere above the rim of the pit, there rang out a loud, long-drawn call, “Oh-eye-ee, oh-eye-ee-e.” It was not the cry of an animal. It was a human voice.
Hastily Hugh thrust the unopened packet into the breast of his deerskin tunic, and looked up apprehensively at the border of green about the rim of the pit. The man who had shouted could not be far away. There might be others even nearer. If anyone should push through that protecting fringe of growth, he would be looking directly down on the two lads. The bales would be in plain view.
Hugh thought quickly. “We must conceal the furs again, Blaise,” he whispered, “until we can find some way to get them to the boat.”
Blaise nodded. “We will take them away at night.”
Rapidly and with many an apprehensive glance upward, the two replaced the bales on the platform of poles, covered the heap with the cedar boughs and built up the stones around and over the whole. They were in too great haste to do as careful a piece of work as Jean Beaupré had done. Their rock pile would scarcely have stood close scrutiny without betraying something suspicious. From above, however, its appearance was innocent enough, and no chance comer would be likely to descend into the hole.
Squeezing through the narrow slit, the brothers examined the cleft that ran down in a steep incline of rock fragments to the water. The simplest plan would be to bring the boat in there. With strangers likely to appear at any moment, it would be best to wait until nightfall. The two decided to return to the cove where they had camped, and wait for darkness.
Back through the fissure and over the low ground behind the shore ridge, they made their way cautiously, silently. They went slowly, taking pains to efface any noticeable tracks or signs of their passage, and watching and listening alertly for any sight or sound of human beings. A rustling in the bushes caused both to stand motionless until they caught sight of the cause, a little, bright-eyed squirrel or a gray-brown snowshoe rabbit with long ears and big hind feet. Both boys would have liked that fresh meat for the dinner pot, but they had no wish to attract attention by a shot.
When they reached the top of the cliff, they found that the fog had entirely disappeared, driven away by a light breeze. As they went down the steep, open slope to the little beach, they knew themselves to be exposed to the view of anyone who might happen to be looking out from the woods bordering the cove. Anxiously they scanned woods, rocks and lake, but saw no sign of any human being. Not a living creature but a fish duck peacefully riding the water was to be seen. The boat and supplies were undisturbed.
The boys stayed quietly in the cove during the remaining hours of daylight. The beach was partially hidden from the water by the end of the shore ridge, and screened on the land side by the dense growth of trees and bushes bordering the pebbles. Beyond the beach was a vertical rock cliff sheer to the water from its forested summit. Then came another short stretch of pebbles bounded by a low rock wall and protected by the jutting mass of rock, only scantily wooded, that formed the dividing line between the twin coves. To anyone standing over there or among the trees at the edge of the high central cliff, the boys and their boat would have been in plain sight. The shot Blaise had heard in the early dawn had come from somewhere above that cliff, but it was not likely that the man who had fired that shot was still there. Doubtless he had been hunting. At any rate the lads had no better place to wait for darkness to come. They were at least far enough from the pit so their discovery by wandering Indians or white hunters need not lead to the finding of the furs. As the day wore on, the brothers cast many an anxious glance around the shores of the cove. They were startled whenever a squirrel chattered, a woodpecker tapped loudly on a branch, or two tree trunks rubbed against one another, swayed by a stronger gust of wind.
As their food was ill adapted to being eaten raw, they permitted themselves a small cooking fire, taking care to use only thoroughly dry wood and to keep a clear flame with as little smoke as possible. After the kettle had been swung over the fire, Hugh drew from his breast the packet and examined the outside carefully. The wrapping was of oiled fish-skin tied securely.
“Shall we open it, Blaise?” he asked again.
The younger boy cast a quick glance about him, at the rock slope they had descended, the dense bushes beyond the pebbles, the forest rim along the summit of the high central cliff, the rough, wave-eaten rock mass across the cove. Then his eyes returned to his companion’s face and he nodded silently.
Curious though he was, Hugh was deliberate in opening the mysterious packet. He untied the cord and removed the outer cover carefully not to tear it. Within the oiled skin wrapper was still another of the finest, whitest, softest doeskin, tied with the same sort of bark cord. The cord had been passed through holes in a square of paper-thin birch bark. On the bark label was written in the same faint, muddy brown ink Blaise had used:
“To be delivered to M. René Dubois, At Montreal. Of great importance.”
Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, with drops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupré’s seal had been pressed. For several minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then he looked up at his half-brother’s equally grave face.
“I don’t like to open this,” Hugh said. “It is addressed to M. René Dubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to take it to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open it in my presence and tell me what it contains.”
Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilization to realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed to someone else. “That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?” he inquired.
“No, I didn’t know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never lived there, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don’t remember that I ever heard of Monsieur René Dubois, but my relatives in Montreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can’t, then I think it would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. Shall I take charge of this, Blaise?”
“You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet to Montreal.”
To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woods of the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard to realize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the point and had tied up there. They had surely been lucky to find the cache of furs so soon.
Not until the shadows of the shore lay deep upon the water did the lads push off the bateau. They paddled silently out of the little cove and close under the abrupt, riven rocks, taking care not to let a blade splash as it dipped and was withdrawn. The water was rippled by the lightest of breezes, and the moon was bright. The deep cleft where Jean Beaupré’s wrecked boat lay was in black darkness, though. Hugh could not even make out the stern. His mind was busy with thoughts of the father he had known so slightly, with speculations about his coming to the island, about the way he had left it. Through what treachery had he received his death blow?
Another rift in the rock was passed before the boys reached a wider, shallower cleft they felt sure was the one leading to the cache. Cautiously they turned into the dark mouth of the fissure and grounded the boat on the pebbles, water-worn and rounded here where the waves reached them. Overhead the moonlight filtered down among the thick sprays of the stunted cedars that grew along the rim and even down into the crack. But the darkness at the bottom was so deep the brothers could proceed only by feeling their way with both hands and feet. In this manner they went up over pebbles and angular rock fragments to the narrow slit in the wall, and squeezed through in pitch blackness to the circular hollow.
There was moonlight in the pit, but the cache, close under the rock wall, was in the shadow. So difficult did the boys find it to remove the stones in the darkness, that they decided to risk lighting a torch. During the afternoon Blaise had made a couple of torches of spruce and balsam. He lighted one now and stuck it in a cranny of the rock just above the heap of stones. By the feeble, flickering and smoky light, the cache was uncovered. Pushing and hauling the bales through the narrow crack was difficult and troublesome. The larger ones would not go through, and had to be unwrapped and reduced to smaller parcels. Even by the dim light of the torch, the boys could see that the furs were of excellent quality. Before loading, the bateau had to be pushed out a little way, Blaise standing in the water to hold it while Hugh piled in the bales. Then both climbed in and paddled quietly out of the crack.
There was not breeze enough for sailing. Hugh and Blaise were anxious to get away from the spot where they had found the furs and had heard the shout, but paddling the heavily laden bateau was slow work. Without a breeze to fill the sail, they were loth to start across the open lake, so they kept on along shore to the northeast. When they had put a mile or more between themselves and the place where they had found the furs, they would camp and wait for sunrise and a breeze.
Slowly and laboriously they paddled on, close to the high shore. The calm, moonlit water stretched away on their left. The dark, forest-crowned rocks, huge, worn and seamed pillars, towered forbiddingly on the other side. At last the wider view of the water ahead and the barrenness of the tumbled rocks to the right indicated that they were reaching the end of the shore along which they had been travelling.
“We’ll land now,” said Hugh, “as soon as we can find a place.”
The abrupt, truncated pillars of rock were not so high here, but were bordered at the water’s edge with broken blocks and great boulders, affording little chance of a landing place. By paddling close in, however, slowly and cautiously to avoid disaster, the boys discovered a niche between two blocks of rock, with water deep enough to permit running the boat in. There they climbed out on the rock and secured the bateau by a couple of turns of the rope around a smaller block. In rough weather such a landing would have been impossible, but on this still night there was no danger of the bateau bumping upon the rocks. Farther along Blaise found a spot where the solid rock shelved down gradually. Rolling themselves in their blankets, the brothers stretched out on the hard bed.
The plaintive crying of gulls waked Hugh just as the sun was coming up from the water, a great red ball in the morning mist. “I don’t like this place,” he said as he sat up. “We can be seen plainly from the lake.”
“Yes,” Blaise agreed, “but we can see far across the lake. If a boat comes, we shall see it while it is yet a long way off. I think we need not fear anything from that direction. No, the only way an enemy can draw near unseen is from the land, from the woods farther back there.”
“The water is absolutely still,” Hugh went on. “There isn’t a capful of wind to fill our sail, and we can’t paddle this loaded boat clear across to the mainland. We must find a better place than this, though, to wait for a breeze. I am going to look around a bit.”
The lads soon found that they were near the end of a point, a worn, wave-eaten, rock point, bare except for a few scraggly bushes, clumps of dwarfed white cedar and such mosses and lichens as could cling to the surface. Farther back were woods, mostly evergreen. The two felt that they must find a spot where they could wait for a wind without being visible from the woods. Yet they wanted to remain where they could watch the weather and get away at the first opportunity. At the very tip of the point, the slate-gray rocks were abrupt, slightly overhanging indeed, but in one spot there lay exposed at the base a few feet of low, shelving, wave-smoothed shore, which must be under water in rough weather. On this calm day the lower rock shore was dry. There, in the shelter of the overhanging masses, the boys would be entirely concealed from the land side. A little farther along on the end of the point, rose an abrupt, rounded tower of rock. Between the rock tower and the place they had selected for themselves was a narrow inlet where the bateau would be fairly well hidden. They shoved the boat out from between the boulders, where it had lain safe while they slept, and paddled around to the little inlet. On the wave-smoothed, low rock shore, they kindled a tiny fire of dry sticks gathered at the edge of the woods, and hung the kettle from a pole slanted over the flames from a cranny in the steep rock at the rear.
The wind did not come up as the sun rose higher, as the lads had hoped it would. The delay was trying, especially to the impetuous Hugh. They had found the cache, secured the furs and the packet, and had got safely away with them, only to be stuck here on the end of this point for hours of idle waiting. Yet even Hugh did not want to start across the lake under the present conditions. Paddling the bateau had been laborious enough when it was empty, but now, laden almost to the water-line, the boat was far worse to handle. Propelling it was not merely hard work, but progress would be so slow that the journey across to the mainland would be a long one, with always the chance that the wind, when it did come, might blow from the wrong quarter. The bateau would not sail against the wind. To attempt to paddle it against wind and waves would invite disaster. Sailing the clumsy craft, heavy laden as it was, across the open water with a fair wind would be quite perilous enough. There was nothing to do but wait, and this seemed as good a place in which to wait as any they were likely to find.
As the morning advanced, the sun grew hot, beating down on the water and radiating heat from the rocks. Scarcely a ripple wrinkled the blue surface of the lake, and the distance was hazy and shimmering. An island with steep, straight sides, four or five miles northeast of the point, was plainly visible, but Thunder Cape to the west was so dim it could barely be discerned. The day was much like the one on which the lads had come across from the mainland.
Hugh grew more and more restless. Several times he climbed the only climbable place on the overhanging rock and peeped between the branches of a dwarfed cedar bush. He could see across to the edge of the woods, but he discovered nothing to either interest or alarm him. By the time the sun had passed the zenith, he could stand inaction no longer. He was not merely restless. He had become vaguely uneasy. The boat was hidden from his view by the rocks between. In such a lonely place he would have had no fear for the furs, had it not been for the shot and the call he and Blaise had heard.
“Someone might slip out of the woods and down to the boat without our catching a glimpse of him,” Hugh remarked at last. “I’m going over there to see if everything is all right.”
To reach the boat, he was obliged to climb to his peeping place and pull himself up the rest of the way, or else go around and across the top of the steep rocks. He chose the latter route. The boat and furs he found unharmed. The only trespasser was a gull that had alighted on one of the bales and was trying with its strong, sharp beak to pick a hole in the wrapping. He frightened the bird away, then stopped to drink from his cupped palm.
A low cry from Blaise startled him. He glanced up just in time to see his brother, who had followed him to the top of the rocks, drop flat. Curiosity getting the better of caution, Hugh sprang up the slope. One glance towards the west, and he followed the younger lad’s example and dropped on his face.
“A canoe! They must have seen us.”
Cautiously Hugh raised his head for another look. The canoe was some distance away. When he had first glimpsed it, it had been headed towards the point. Now, to his surprise, it was going in the opposite direction, going swiftly, paddles flashing in the sun.
“They have turned about, Blaise. Is it possible they didn’t see us?”
“Truly they saw us. My back was that way. I turned my head and there they were. My whole body was in clear view. Then you came, and they must have seen you also. They are running away from us.”
“It would seem so indeed, but what do they fear? There are four men in that canoe, and we are but two.”
“They know not how many we are. They may have enemies on Minong, though I never heard that any man lived here.”
“Something has certainly frightened them away. They are making good speed to the west, towards the mainland.”
The boys remained stretched out upon the rock, only their heads raised as they watched the departing canoe.
“They turn to the southwest now,” Blaise commented after a time. “They go not to the mainland, but are bound for some other part of Minong.”
“They were bound for this point when we first saw them,” was Hugh’s reply. “We don’t know what made them change their minds, but we have cause to be grateful to it whatever——What was that?”
He sprang to his feet and turned quickly.
“Lie down,” commanded Blaise. “They will see you.”
Hugh, unheeding, plunged down to the bateau. It was undisturbed. Not a living creature was in sight. Yet something rattling down and falling with a splash into the water had startled him. He looked about for an explanation. A fresh scar at the top of the slope showed where a piece of rock had chipped off. Undoubtedly that was what he had heard. His own foot, as he lay outstretched, had dislodged the loose, crumbling flake.
Reminded of caution, Hugh crawled back up the slope instead of going upright. The canoe was still in sight going southwest. Both boys remained lying flat until it had disappeared beyond the low point. Then they returned to the low shore beneath the overhanging rock. For the present at least there seemed to be nothing to be feared from that canoe, but would it return, and where was the man who had fired the shot and later sent that call ringing through the woods? Did he belong with the canoe party? Had he gone away with them, or was he, with companions perhaps, somewhere on the wooded ridges? The boys did not know whether to remain where they were or go somewhere else.
The weather finally brought them to a decision. All day they had hoped for a breeze, but when it came it brought with it threatening gray and white clouds. Rough, dark green patches on the water, that had been so calm all day, denoted the passing of squalls. Thunder began to rumble threateningly, and the gray, streaked sky to the north and west indicated that rain was falling there. The island to the northeast shrank to about half its former height and changed its shape. It grew dimmer and grayer, as the horizon line crept gradually nearer.
“Fog,” remarked Blaise briefly.
“It is coming in,” Hugh agreed, “and this is not a good place to be caught in a thick fog. Shall we go back into the woods?”
“I think we had best take the bateau and go along the other side of this point. We cannot start for the mainland to-night, and we shall need a sheltered place for our camp.”
The fog did not seem to be coming in very rapidly, but by the time the bateau had been shoved off, the island across the water had disappeared. The breeze came in gusts only and was not available for sailing. So the lads were obliged to take up their paddles again.
Beyond the tower-like rock there was a short stretch of shelving shore, followed by abrupt, dark rocks of roughly pillared formation. Then came a gradual slope, rough, seamed and uneven of surface. It looked indeed as if composed of pillars, the tops of which had been sliced off with a downward sweep of the giant Kepoochikan’s knife. The shore ahead was of a yellowish gray color, as if bleached by the sun, slanting to the water, with trees growing as far down as they could find anchorage and sustenance. These sloping rocks were in marked contrast to those of the opposite side of the point, along which the boys had come the night before, where the cliffs and ridges rose so abruptly from the lake.
After a few minutes of paddling, the brothers found themselves passing along a channel thickly wooded to the water-line. The land on the right was a part of the same long point, but on the left were islands with short stretches of water between, across which still other islands beyond could be seen. The fog, though not so dense in this protected channel as on the open lake, was thickening, and the boys kept a lookout for a camping place.
When an opening on the left revealed what appeared to be a sheltered bay, they turned in. Between two points lay two tiny islets, one so small it could hold but five or six little trees. Paddling between the nearer point and islet, the boys found themselves in another much narrower channel, open to the northeast, but apparently closed in the other direction. Going on between the thickly forested shores,—a dense mass of spruce, balsam, white cedar, birch and mountain ash,—they saw that what they had taken for the end of the bay was in reality an almost round islet so thickly wooded that the shaggy-barked trunks of its big white cedars leaned far out over the water. The explorers rounded the islet to find that the shores beyond did not quite come together, leaving a very narrow opening. Paddling slowly and taking care to avoid the rocks that rose nearly to the surface and left a channel barely wide enough for the bateau to pass through, they entered a little landlocked bay, as secluded and peaceful as an inland pond.
“We couldn’t find a better place,” said Hugh, looking around the wooded shores with satisfaction, “to wait for the weather to clear. We are well hidden from any canoe that might chance to come along that outer channel.”
The little pond was shallow. The boat had to be paddled cautiously to avoid grounding. Below the thick fringe of trees and alders, the prow was run up on the pebbles.
“We might as well leave the furs in the boat,” Hugh remarked.
“No.” Blaise shook his head emphatically. “We cannot be sure no one will come in here. The furs we can hide. We ourselves can take to the woods, but this heavy bateau we cannot hide.”
“I’m not afraid anyone will find us here.”
“We thought there was no one on Minong at all. Yet we have heard a shot and a call and have seen a canoe.”
“You’re right. We can’t be too cautious.”
While Hugh unloaded the bales, Blaise went in search of a hiding place. Returning in a few minutes, he was surprised to find the boat, the prow of which had just touched the beach, now high and dry on the pebbles for half its length. Hugh had not pulled the boat up. The water had receded.
“There is a big old birch tree there in the woods and it is hollow,” Blaise reported. “It has been struck by lightning and is broken. We can hide the furs there.”
“Won’t squirrels or wood-mice get at them?”
“We will put bark beneath and over them, and we shall not leave them there long.”
“I hope not surely.”
Blaise lifted a bale and started into the woods. Hugh, with another bale, was about to follow, when Blaise halted him.
“Walk not too close to me. Go farther over there. If we go the same way, we shall make a beaten trail that no one could overlook. We must keep apart and go and come different ways.”
Hugh grasped the wisdom of this plan at once. He kept considerably to the left of Blaise until he neared the old birch, and on his return followed still another route. He was surprised to find that the water had come up again. The pebbles that had been exposed so short a time before were now under water once more. The bow of the bateau was afloat and he had to pull it farther up.
“There is a sort of tide in here,” he remarked as Blaise came out of the woods. “It isn’t a real tide, for it comes and goes too frequently. Do you know what causes it?”
“No, though I have seen the water come and go that way in some of the bays of the mainland.”
“It isn’t a true tide, of course,” Hugh repeated, “but a sort of current.”
Going lightly in their soft moccasins, the two made the trips necessary to transport the furs. They left scarcely any traces of their passage that might not have been made by some wild animal. Hugh climbed the big, hollow tree which still stood firm enough to bear his weight. Down into the great hole in the trunk he lowered a sheet of birch bark that Blaise had stripped from a fallen tree some distance away. Then Hugh dropped down the bales, and put another piece of bark on top. The furs were well hidden. From the ground no one could see anything unusual about the old tree.
Returning to the shore, the two pushed off the boat and paddled to another spot several hundred yards away. There Hugh felled a small poplar and cut the slender trunk into rollers which he used to pull the heavy bateau well up on shore where it would be almost hidden by the alders.
Night was approaching and the wooded shores of the little lake were still veiled in fog. The water was calm and the damp air spicy with the scent of balsam and sweet with the odor of the dainty pink twin-flowers. On the whole of the big island the boys could scarcely have found a more peaceful spot. The woods were so thick there seemed to be no open spaces convenient for camping, so the brothers kindled their supper fire on the pebbles above the water-line, and lay down to sleep in the boat.
The night passed quietly, unbroken by any sound of beast, bird or man, until the crying of the gulls woke the sleepers in the fog-gray dawn. Chilled and stiff, they threw off their damp blankets and climbed out of the bateau. By dint of much patience and a quantity of finely shredded birch bark, a slow fire of damp wood was kindled, the flame growing brighter as the wood dried out.
After he had swallowed his last spoonful of corn, Hugh remarked, “If we are held here to-day, we must try for food of some kind. We haven’t hunted or fished since we left the mainland, and our supplies are going fast.”
Blaise nodded. “We need fire no shots to fish.”
Fishing in the little pond did not appear promising. When the boys attempted to paddle through the passageway, they ran aground, and were forced to wait for the water to rise and float the boat. The same fluctuation they had noticed the day before was still going on. Luck did not prove good in the narrow channel, and they went on into the wider one between the long point and the row of islands. The fog was almost gone, though the sky was still gray. Would the weather permit a start for the mainland?
Turning to the northeast, they went the way they had come the preceding afternoon. As they approached the end of the last island, they realized that this was no time to attempt a crossing. Wind there was now, too much wind. It came from the northwest, and the lake, a deep green under the gray sky, was heaving with big waves, their tips touched with foam. The bateau would not sail against that wind. To try to paddle the heavily-laden boat across those waves would be the worst sort of folly.
Turning again, they went slowly back through the protected channel, Hugh wielding the blade while Blaise fished. Luck was still against them. Either there were no fish in the channel or they were not hungry. On beyond the entrance to the hiding place, the two paddled. Passing the abrupt end of an island, they came to a wider expanse of water. They were still sheltered by the high, wooded ridges to their right, where dark evergreens and bright-leaved birches rose in tiers. In the other direction, they could see, between scattered islands, the open lake to the horizon line. Misty blue hills in the distance ahead, beyond islands and forested shores, indicated another bay, longer and wider than the one the Otter had entered.
Blaise, who was paddling now, raised his blade and looked questioningly at Hugh. The latter answered the unspoken query. “I am for going on. We have seen no signs of human beings since that canoe, and we need fish.”
Blaise nodded and dipped his paddle again. As they drew near a reef running out from the end of a small island, Hugh felt his line tighten. Fishing from the bateau was much less precarious than from a canoe. Without endangering the balance of the boat, Hugh hauled in his line quickly, swung in his fish, a lake trout of eight or ten pounds, and rapped it smartly on the head with his paddle handle. He then gave the line to Blaise and took another turn at the paddle. In less than ten minutes, Blaise had a pink-fleshed trout somewhat smaller than Hugh’s.
Then luck deserted them again. Not another fish responded to the lure of the hook, though they paddled back and forth beside the reef several times. They went on along the little island and up the bay for another mile or more without a nibble. It was a wonderful place, that lonely bay, fascinating in its wild beauty. Down steep, densely wooded ridges, the deep green spires of the spruces and balsams, interspersed with paler, round-topped birches, descended in close ranks. Between the ridges, the clear, transparent water was edged with gray-green cedars, white-flowered mountain ashes, alders and other bushes, and dotted with wooded islands. Far beyond the head of the bay blue hills rose against the sky. The fishing, however, was disappointing, and paddling the bateau was tiresome work, so the lads turned back.
As they passed close to an island, the younger boy’s quick eye caught a movement in a dogwood near the water. A long-legged hare went leaping across an opening.
“If we cannot get fish enough, we will eat rabbit,” said the boy, turning the boat into a shallow curve in the shore of the little island. “I will set some snares. If we are delayed another day, we will come in the morning to take our catch.”
Tying the boat to an overhanging cedar tree, the brothers went ashore. On the summit of the island, in the narrowest places along a sort of runway evidently frequented by hares, Blaise set several snares of cedar bark cord. While the younger brother was placing his last snare, Hugh returned to the boat. He startled a gull perched upon the prow, and the bird rose with a harsh cry of protest at being disturbed. Immediately the cry was repeated twice, a little more faintly each time. Hugh looked about for the birds that had answered. No other gulls were in sight. Then he realized that what he had heard was a double echo, unusually loud and clear. Forgetting caution he let out a loud, “Oh—O.” It came back promptly, “Oh—o, o—o.”
“Be quiet!” The words were hissed in a low voice, as Blaise leaped out from among the trees. “Canoes are coming. We must hide.”
He darted back into the woods, Hugh following. Swiftly they made their way to the summit of the island. The growth was thin along the irregular rock lane. Blaise dropped down and crawled, Hugh after him. Lying flat in a patch of creeping bearberry, the younger lad raised his head a little. Hugh wriggled to his side, and, peeping through a serviceberry bush, looked out across the water.
The warning had been justified. Two canoes, several men in each, were coming up the bay. The nearest canoe was not too far away for Hugh to make out in the center a man who towered, tall and broad, above the others. The boy remembered the gigantic Indian outlined against the sky, as his canoe passed in the early dawn. He saw him again, standing motionless, with folded arms, in the red light of the fire.
Blaise, close beside him, whispered in his ear, “Ohrante himself. What shall we do?”
If the canoes came down the side of the island where the bateau was, discovery was inevitable. For a moment, Hugh’s mind refused to work. A gull circled out over the water, screaming shrilly. Like a ray of light a plan flashed into the boy’s head.
“Stay here,” he whispered. “Keep still. Remember the ‘Bay of Spirits.’”
Swiftly Hugh wriggled back and darted down through the woods to the spot where the bateau lay. He crouched behind an alder bush, drew a long breath, and sent a loud, shrill cry across the water. Immediately it was repeated once, twice, ringing back across the channel from the islands and steep shore beyond. Before the final echo had died away, he sent his voice forth again, this time in a hoarse bellow. Then, in rapid succession, he hooted like an owl, barked like a dog, howled like a wolf, whistled piercingly with two fingers in his mouth, imitated the mocking laughter of the loon, growled and roared and hissed and screamed in every manner he could devise and with all the power of his strong young lungs. The roughened and cracked tones of his voice, not yet through turning from boy’s to man’s, made his yells and howls and groans the more weird and demoniac. And each sound was repeated once and again, producing a veritable pandemonium of unearthly noises which seemed to come from every side.