The day was already well advanced when the three travellers started north on the open lake. The sky was clear and there was no wind, but a haze hung on the horizon and made the western shore invisible as Ganawa skirted along the east shore. A broad swell from the north added to the impression that the canoe was headed for the open sea.
“Bruce, I am afraid,” Ray whispered. “This lake is so much bigger than Lake George and Lake Champlain in Vermont. It looks like the ocean. I—I am afraid we shall all drown.”
“My son, you need have no fear,” Ganawa assured the young lad. “The lake is not very big here. If there were no haze [[30]]in the air you could see the blue forest to the west. I can tell from the sky that no wind is coming, and we are running so close to shore that we could land before the waves grow too big, if a wind did spring up.”
They might have been going about three hours, when Ray became more cheerful. “I can see land now,” he remarked, “ahead of us to the left.”
“You see an island, my son,” Ganawa told him. “The French call it Isle Parisienne.”
When the sun stood low beyond this island, Ganawa headed the canoe toward a point which is now called Goulais Point. “We sleep here to-night,” he said. “It is not good to travel on the Big Lake after dark.”
“My father,” asked Ray, “I thought you said it was only a little way to that bay where we are going?”
“It is only a little way,” Ganawa replied calmly. “After we have slept, we shall soon go to Batchawana Bay.”
Ray asked no more questions, but he [[31]]wondered what distance Ganawa would call a long journey, if he referred to a two-days’ trip as “only a little way.”
When Ganawa had gone off to gather boughs for the night’s camp, Ray could not resist expressing his anxiety to his older brother. “Bruce,” he said, “this lake and the country are so big we shall never find anybody. I am not afraid any more to go with you and Ganawa on the lake if you don’t go in a storm. But you will see we shall never find Jack Dutton. How can you find anybody here? There are no towns and no farms, just water and woods, and rocks and big hills and islands and a few Indians. Do you think there are wolves and bears in these woods? If there are, I am going to ask Ganawa to let me sleep in the canoe.”