"Went up to Carr's camp a while ago."
"When did you get in?" Thompson inquired further.
"Last night. Lost a day laying up at Blind Bay for a southeaster. Gee, she did blow."
Thompson smiled and passed on. Blind Bay was only two miles from Cape Coburn. Just a narrow neck of land had separated them that blustery night. It was almost like a race. Tommy would not be pleased to see him treading so close on his heels. Thompson felt that intuitively. All was fair in love and war. Still, even in aërial warfare, ruthless and desperate as it was, there were certain courtesies, a certain element of punctilio. Thompson had an intuition that Ashe would not subscribe to even that simple code. In fact he began to have a premonition of impending conflict as he thrust stoutly on his paddle blade. Tommy had changed. He was no longer the simple, straightforward soul with whom Thompson had fought man-fashion on the bank of Lone Moose, and with whom he had afterward achieved friendship on a long and bitter trail.
Three hundred yards past the Alert he came to a landing stage which fitted the description given by the skipper of the Squalla. Thompson hauled his canoe out on the float, gained the shore, and found a path bordering the bank. He followed this. Not greatly distant he could hear the blows of chopping, the shrill blasts of a donkey-engine whistle and the whirr of the engine itself as it shuddered and strained on its anchored skids, reeling up half a mile, more or less, of inch and a quarter steel cable, snaking a forty-foot log out of the woods as a child would haul a toothpick on the end of a string.
Before long the brush-floored forest opened on a small area of parked wood. In this pleasant place stood a square block of a house. From a tall staff fluttered the Union Jack. As Thompson came near this the door opened and a group of youngsters tumbled out pell-mell and began to frolic. Thompson looked at his watch. He had stumbled on a school in the hour of morning recess.
"Where does Mr. Carr live?" he asked one of these urchins when he got near enough to have speech with him.
The youngster pointed upstream.
"First house you come to," he said. "White house with shingles painted green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over there. Do you know my dad, mister?"
The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his "dad." Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.