They had their knives, and two small hatchets. They used young saplings for keel and the ribs, and, with patience, they managed to strip off enough of the birch bark to cover the canoe.
It took them two days to get all the materials together and then, when the canoe was roughly shaped, they had to spend much more time on it, rendering it water-proof by smearing the seams with pitch and gum which exuded from several trees near at hand. They had used withes of willow to bind the boat together, and, though it was a very crude looking affair, the boys thought it would serve for what they wanted.
They chopped out some rough paddles, and on the fifth day the boat was ready to try. They put it into the water in the evening, and, to their delight, it floated on an even keel, and would hold two of them at a time.
"We'll take turns making a trip to-morrow," said Bart. "It doesn't leak hardly any. It wouldn't take a prize, and it's not much on looks, but it's something to have made a canoe off in the midst of the woods, and with scarcely any tools."
His chums agreed with him, and that night they went to bed thinking of the fun they would have the next day.
Ned was the first to awake. He got up, in accordance with the rule that the earliest riser must build the fire. He looked over toward the cots where his companions slept. As he did so he gave a start.
"Frank is gone!" he called, and Bart and Fenn awakened.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CANOE TRIP
When the completed canoe had been set into the water that evening, a daring plan had entered Frank's mind. On his visit to the sanitarium he had noticed that, at the foot of the cliff, there flowed a stream of water. He thought it might be the same one that ran past the camp, and he determined to learn if this was so.
"If it is, I can make the trip much more quickly than I did before," he said to himself. "I'll try it when the others are asleep."