“I’ll come for you at half past three, eh? That’s all right, then,” and the boatman was off.
The three girls, really glad to be away from the crowd and the confusion of the moving picture camp, settled down to several hours of companionship. Helen could be silent if she pleased, and with her knitting and a novel proceeded to curl up under a tamarack tree and bury herself for the time being.
Helen had not, however, forgotten the “inner woman,” as she pronounced it. When lunch time came she opened the covered basket which she had brought in addition to the book and the knitting, and produced sandwiches and cake, besides the wherewithal for the making of a cup of tea over a can of solidified alcohol. They lunched famously.
It was while they were thus engaged, and chatting, that the staccato exhaust of a motor-boat drew their attention to the Island of Pipes. From the other side, a boat was poking around into the passage leading to the American shore.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Helen, “the King of the Pipes isn’t in that boat, is he?”
“Not at all,” Ruth assured her. “I see nobody who looks like him among those men—”
“All are not men, Miss Ruth,” interrupted Wonota, the keen-eyed.
“What do you mean, Wonota?” gasped Helen, whirling around to gaze again at the passing launch.
But Ruth did not say a word. She had been examining the boat closely. She saw it was the very speedy boat she and Chess Copley had seen out on the wider part of the river several weeks before. The launch was not moving rapidly now, but Ruth was sure that it was a powerful craft.
It was Helen who marked the figure Wonota had spoken of in the boat. It certainly did not appear to be a man.