His guide was silent a moment as though thinking, and then replied: “Yes. Come on!”
Instead of continuing on the road as the officer had expected, the lad struck into the woods on the left, where the ground was still of a swampy nature. But, leaping from log to log, he led the way with a rapidity that made it difficult for the Britisher to keep pace with him, and impossible to carry on any conversation.
After traveling for a few rods they lost sight of the road, and then, instead of decaying logs, they found trees which had been felled so that they lay end to end, clearly to furnish a firm footing for any who wished to go deeper into the forest. If the engineer noted the singularity of this circumstance, he had no chance to comment upon it, for Ira was still a rod or more in the lead. At length, however, he stopped and allowed the captain to come up with him. They were then on the edge of a sluggish creek of considerable width and depth.
“What does this mean?” the captain demanded. “What have you come here for, jumping from log to log like a frog? We cannot ford this stream.”
“We don’t need to,” his guide replied. “We’ll go down a bit,” and as he spoke the lad bent over, searching with his hands until he found a rope. Pulling on this, he drew out from under the overhanging bushes, a small canoe.
“Get in,” he said, holding it steady for his companion to embark.
“You have been here before,” Captain Howells remarked as he sat down in the light craft.
“Certainly, or I should not have known the way.”
As he stepped in, cast off the rope, and took up the paddle, the young scout added:
“Of course I wasn’t sure of finding the boat here. Some one else might have used it, or a freshet carried it away. There was a risk in coming; but this course will take us to the nearest house where we can pass the night, so I concluded to run the chances.”