“The cache, if it is on the island, must be sought that way,” said Blaise.
“The arrow surely points up the crack. We’ll follow it.”
The smashed bow of the boat was firmly lodged among the fragments of rock upon which it had been driven. Over those fragments, up a steep slope, the boys picked their way for a few yards, until the walls drew together, the fissure narrowing to a mere slit. By throwing the light of the torch into the slit and reaching in arm’s length, Hugh satisfied himself that there were no furs there. Nevertheless the arrow pointed in that direction. He looked about him. The left hand wall was almost perpendicular, solid rock apparently, with only an occasional vertical crack or shallow niche where some hardy bit of greenery clung. But from the right wall several blocks had fallen out. On one of those blocks Hugh was standing. He held the torch up at arm’s length.
“There’s a hole up there. Such a place would make a good cache.”
“Let me up on your shoulders,” Blaise proposed, “and I will look in.”
Sitting on Hugh’s shoulders, Blaise threw the light of the torch into the hole. Then he reached in his arm. “There are no furs here,” he said.
Hugh had been almost certain he had found the cache. He was keenly disappointed. “Are you sure?” he cried.
“Yes. It is a small place, just a hole in the rock. Let me down.”
“There are no furs there,” Blaise repeated, when he had jumped down from Hugh’s shoulders. “But something I found.” He held out a short piece of rawhide cord.
Hugh stared at the cord, then at his half-brother. “You were not the first to visit that hole then. What is the meaning of this?” He took the bit of rawhide in his fingers.
“I think it means that the furs have been there, but have been taken away,” was the younger lad’s slow reply. “It is a piece from the thong that bound a bale of furs. That is what I think.”
“Someone has found the cache and taken away the pelts.”
“I fear it,” agreed Blaise. Though he spoke quietly, his disappointment was as strong as Hugh’s.
“That someone is probably one of the Old Company’s men. Then the furs are lost to us indeed. Yet we do not know. How did anyone learn of the cache? It may have been Black Thunder of course, but then what was the meaning of the blood-stained shirt? No, we don’t know, Blaise. Our furs may be gone for good, but we can’t be sure. Father may have put them in there out of reach of the storm and later moved them to some other place, or they may never have been in that hole at all. Some animal may have carried that bit of rawhide there.”
Blaise shook his head. “What animal could go up there?”
“A squirrel perhaps, or a bird, a gull. Anyway we can’t give up the search yet, just because we have found a bit of rawhide in a hole in the rocks. That would be folly. Perhaps the arrow points up the rift to some spot above. We can’t climb up here. We must go back.”
The two returned to the wreck and climbed up the way they had come down. Hugh again in the lead, they followed along the top of the rift to its head. There they sought earnestly for some sign that might lead them to the cache, but found none. When at sunset they gave up the search for that day, their fear that the furs had been stolen from the hole in the rock had grown near to a certainty. Well-nigh discouraged, they went back to the beach in the shallow cove where they had left their boat.
“Why is it, Blaise,” Hugh asked, as they sat by the fire waiting for the kettle to boil, “that no Indians dwell on this big island? It is a beautiful place and there must be game and furs for the hunting.”
Blaise gave his characteristic French shrug. “I know not if there is much game, and Minong is far from the mainland. I have heard that there is great store of copper in the rocks. The Ojibwas say that the island was made by the giant Kepoochikan. Once upon a time the fish quarrelled with Kepoochikan and tried to drown him by making a great flood. But he built a big floating island and made it rich with copper and there he took his family and all the kinds of birds and beasts there are. When the water, which had spread over the whole earth, stopped rising, he told a gull to dive down to the bottom and bring up some mud. The gull could not dive so far, but drowned before he reached the bottom. Then Kepoochikan sent a beaver. The beaver came up almost drowned, but with a ball of mud clutched tight in his hands. Kepoochikan took the mud and made a new earth, but he kept the island Minong for his home. After many years there was another giant, the great Nanibozho, who was chief of all the Indians on the new land Kepoochikan had made. Nanibozho is a good manito and Kepoochikan a bad one. They went to war, and Nanibozho threw a great boulder from the mainland across at Kepoochikan and conquered him. The boulder is here on Minong yet they say. Since then Nanibozho has guarded the copper of Minong, though some say his real dwelling place is on Thunder Cape. Off the shore and in the channels of Minong he has set sharp rocks to destroy the canoes that approach the island, and he has many spirits to help him guard the treasure.”
“That is only a tale, of course,” said Hugh somewhat disdainfully. “We of the shipOttercamped here several days and we saw or heard no spirits. We found nothing to fear.”
“You sought no copper,” was the retort. “It is said that sometimes Kepoochikan and Nanibozho fight together on the rocks and hurl great boulders about. Strange tales there are too of the thick forest, of the little lakes and bays. There is one place called the Bay of Manitos, where, so I have heard, dwell giant Windigos and great serpents and huge birds and spirits that mock the lonely traveller with shouts and threats and laughter.”
“Surely you do not believe such tales, Blaise,” Hugh protested, “or fear such spirits.”
“I know that neither Kepoochikan nor Nanibozho made the world,” the younger boy replied seriously. “My father and the priests taught me that the good God made the world. But whether the tales of giants and spirits are true, I know not. That I do not fear them I have proved by coming here with you.”
To that remark Hugh had no answer. To believe or be inclined to believe such tales and yet to come to the enchanted island, to come with only one companion, surely proved his half-brother’s courage. Indeed the older boy had no thought of questioning the younger’s bravery. He had come to know Blaise too well.
The night being clear, the boys did not trouble to prepare a shelter. They merely cut some balsam branches and spread them smoothly on the beach. Strange to say, the more superstitious half-breed lad fell asleep immediately, while the white boy, who had scorned the notion of giants and manitos, found sleep long in coming. That night seemed to him the loneliest he had ever spent. Camp, on the trip down and up the main shore, had, to be sure, usually been made far from the camps of other men. But thereweremen, both red and white, on that shore. When the lake was not too rough, there was always the chance that the sound of human voices and the dip of paddles might be heard at any time during the night, as a canoe passed in the starlight.
Here, however, the whole length and breadth of the great island,—which the two lads believed even larger than it really is, some fifty miles in length and twelve or fourteen broad at its widest part,—there lived, so far as they knew, not one human being. Never before had Hugh felt so utterly lonely, such a small, insignificant human creature in an unknown and unfeeling wilderness of woods, waters and rocks. The island was far more beautiful and hospitable now than it had appeared when he visited it before, but then, almost uncannily lonely and remote though the place had seemed, he had had the companionship of Baptiste and Captain Bennett and the rest of the ship’s crew.
Yet what was there to fear? It was not likely that Isle Royale contained any especially fierce beasts. There were wolves and lynxes, but they were skulking, cowardly creatures, and, in the summer at least, must find plentiful prey of rabbits and other small animals. Moose too there were and perhaps bears, but both were harmless unless attacked and cornered. It was not the thought of any animal enemy that caused Hugh’s uneasiness, as he lay listening to the night sounds. His feeling was rather of apprehension, of dread of some unknown evil that threatened his comrade and himself. He tried to shake off the unreasonable dread, but everything about him seemed to serve to intensify the feeling, the low, continuous murmur of the waves on the rocks, the swishing rustle of the wind in the trees, the long-drawn, eerie cries of two loons answering one another somewhere up the bay, the lonely “hoot-ti-toot” of an owl. Once from the wooded ridges above him, there came with startling clearness the shrill screech of a lynx. But all these sounds were natural ones, heard many times during his adventurous journey. Why, tonight, did they seem to hold some new and fearful menace?
Disgusted with himself, he resolved to conquer the unreasonable dread. Will power alone could not triumph over his unrest, but physical weariness won at last and he fell asleep. A brief shower, from the edge of a passing storm-cloud, aroused him once, but the rain did not last long enough to wet his blanket, and he was off to sleep again in a few minutes.
Hugh woke with a start. Dawn had come, but the little cove was shrouded in white mist. Beside him on the balsam bed, Blaise was sitting upright, his body rigid, his bronze face tense. He was listening intently. Hugh freed his arms from his blanket and raised himself on his elbow. Blaise turned his head.
“You heard it?” he whispered.
“Something waked me. What was it?”
“A gun shot.”
“Impossible!”
“I heard it clearly. I had just waked.”
“Near by?”
“Not very far away. Up there somewhere.”
Blaise pointed to the now invisible woods above the sheer cliff that formed the central shore of the cove between the beaches. “It is hard to be quite sure of the direction in this fog, and there was only one shot.”
For some minutes the two lads sat still, listening, but the sound was not repeated. It seemed incredible that any human being should be so near on the big island where neither white men nor Indians were ever known to come intentionally. Hugh was inclined to think Blaise mistaken. The younger boy had certainly heard some sharp sound, but Hugh could scarcely believe it was the report of a gun.
However, the mere suspicion that any other man might be near by was enough to make the boys proceed with the greatest caution. Veiled by the fog,—which had been caused by the warm shower falling on the lake during the night,—they could be seen only by someone very near at hand, but there were other ways in which they might be betrayed. The sound of their voices or movements, the smell of the smoke from their cooking fire might reveal their presence. The secret nature of their quest made them anxious that their visit to the island should not become known. So they lighted no fire, breakfasting on the cold remains of last night’s corn porridge sprinkled with maple sugar. They talked little and in whispers, and took care to make the least possible noise.
Having decided to give at least one more day to the search for the furs, the lads climbed the steep slope and made their way to the head of the fissure. Up there the fog was much less thick than down in the cove. The crack in the rock had narrowed to a mere slit almost choked with tree roots upon which fallen leaves and litter had lodged. Near the edge, in a depression where there was a little soil, stood a clump of birch sprouts growing up about the stump of an old broken tree. In their search for some blaze or mark that might guide them, the two thought they had examined every tree in the vicinity.
That morning, as he was about to pass the clump of birches, Hugh happened to notice what a rapid growth the sprouts had made that season. The sight of the new growth suggested something to him. He began to pull apart and bend back the little trees to get a better view of the old stump. There, concealed by the young growth, was the mark he sought. A piece of the ragged, gray, lichen-scarred bark had been sliced away, and on the bare, crumbly wood had been cut a transverse groove with an arrow point.
Hugh promptly summoned Blaise. The cut in the old stump seemed to prove that the furs might not, after all, have been stolen from the hole in the rocks. The arrow pointed directly along the overgrown crack, which the lads traced for fifty or sixty feet farther, when it came abruptly to an end. They had come to a hollow or gully. The crack showed distinctly in the steep rock wall, but the bottom of the hollow and the opposite gradual slope were deep with soil and thick with growth. The rift, which widened at the outer end into a cleft, ran, it was apparent, clear through the rock ridge that formed the shore cliff. The searchers had now reached the lower ground behind that ridge. Which way should they turn next?
That question was answered promptly. The abrupt face of the rock wall was well overgrown with green moss and green-gray lichens. In one place the short, thick growth had been scratched away to expose a strip of the gray stone about an inch wide and six or seven inches long. The clean-cut appearance of the scratch seemed to prove that it had been made with a knife or some other sharp instrument. So slowly do moss and lichens spread on a rock surface that such a mark would remain clear and distinct for one season at least, probably for several years. There was no arrow point here, but the scratch was to the left of the crack. The boys turned unhesitatingly in that direction.
The growth in this low place was dense. They had to push their way among old, ragged birches and close standing balsams draped with gray beards of lichen which were sapping the trees’ life-blood. Everywhere, on the steep rock wall, on each tree trunk, they sought for another sign. For several hundred yards they found nothing, until they came to a cross gully running back towards the lake. In the very entrance stood a small, broken birch. The slender stem was not completely severed, the top of the tree resting on the ground.
“There is our sign,” said Blaise as soon as he caught sight of the birch.
“It is only a broken tree,” Hugh protested. “I see nothing to show that it is a sign.”
“But I see something,” Blaise answered promptly. “First, there is the position, right here where we need guidance. The tree has been broken so that it points down that ravine. The break is not old, not weathered enough to have happened before last winter. Yet it happened before the leaves came out. They were still in the bud. It was in late winter or early spring that tree was broken.”
“Just about the time father must have been on the island,” Hugh commented.
Blaise went on with his explanation. “What broke the tree? The wind? Sound birches are not easily broken by wind. They sway, they bend, sometimes they are tipped over at the roots. But the stem itself is not broken unless it is rotten or the storm violent. Here are no signs of strong wind. There are no other broken trees near this one.”
“That is true,” murmured Hugh looking about him.
“Now we will look at the break,” Blaise continued confidently. “See, the trunk is sound, but it has been cut with an axe, cut deep and bent down. And here, look here!” His usually calm voice was thrilling with excitement. He was pointing to some small cuts in the white bark just below the break.
“J. B., father’s initials!” cried Hugh.
Blaise laid his finger on his lips to remind his companion that caution must still be observed. They had heard no further sound and had seen no sign of a human being, but the half-breed lad had not forgotten the sharp report that had so startled him in the dawn. It was best to move silently and speak with lowered voice.
Blaise led the way down the narrow cross gully, so narrow that where a tree grew,—and trees seemed to grow everywhere on this wild island where they could push down a root,—there was scarcely room to get by. After a few hundred yards of such going, the ravine began to widen. The walls became higher and so sheer that nothing could cling to them but moss, lichens and sturdy crevice plants. Under foot there was no longer any soil, only pebbles and broken rock fragments. Ahead, beyond the deep shadow of the cleft, lay sunlit water. This was evidently another of the fissures that ran down through the outer rock ridge to the water, fissures that were characteristic of that stretch of shore.
“We are coming back to the lake through another crack much like the one where the old boat lies,” said Hugh. “We must be off the trail somewhere. There is no place here to hide furs.”
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.”
“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.