CHAPTER VII
A WOLF
When the campers awoke, the fog was beginning to lift and a gentle wind was blowing from the northwest. The lake seemed to be quiet, but Ganawa suggested that they walk along a game trail to the southwest corner of the island, where they could have a look over the open water, which was not sheltered by being in the lee of the island. Here an unexpected sight met the eyes of the white boys. Past the rocky point of the island was sweeping a wild sea; at least that was the impression produced in the minds of the white boys by the ceaselessly rolling, swishing, breaking, splashing and pounding waves that kept rolling on and on from the great open sea to the northwest and were ever crowding, crowding in upon the shore and the islands of the southeastern part of [[62]]the lake over a stretch of open water of some two hundred miles.
“Ugh, look at them smash against the shore!” Ray exclaimed to Bruce. “You will see, Bruce, some day they will eat up the whole island.”
Ganawa, however, was not at all excited by the dashing and breaking waves. With a far-away gaze he stood and looked out upon the restless sea, and Bruce wondered where the thoughts of the old hunter were roaming. Perhaps he was thinking of Hamogeesik. Or was he trying to work out in his mind the best route, where they might search with some probability of finding a trace of Bruce’s lost white friend? Bruce himself felt utterly helpless and hopeless in this sublime great wilderness of lake, islands, rocky shores, and grand sweeping wooded hills, over which the silent forest stretched clear to Hudson Bay and the Arctic regions.
“If I had known,” he said to himself as he was standing alone under a weather-beaten spruce and looking out over the waves, [[63]]“I never should have had the nerve to come out to this region and try to find anything or anybody; but I should have expected to lose everything, including my life. On Lake George and Lake Champlain out east, one can see shores and water and woods, and everything has an end; but here everything stretches away into an endless vast; the lake, the shore, the hills and forest, and I suppose the rivers will do the same if we ever begin to explore them.”
While Ganawa and Bruce had each been busy with his own thoughts, Ray, after the manner of a young boy, had seen all that Ganawa and Bruce had seen; but upon him the grand sublime scene had a different effect. He drank it all in, and his young mind was eager for more new impressions. The past and the future did not worry him; he was living in the present.
The sun was out by this time, the white gulls were sailing and screaming near shore, and from the thickets came the whistle of white-throats and the wild melody of the [[64]]hermit-thrushes, but in the sunshine now the songs were much more vigorous and vibrant than they had been in the fog yesterday.
“My father,” asked Ray, “are we going to travel to-day?” On being told that the lake was too rough for a canoe, Ray asked if he might run about for a while on the game trails and along the shore. The sun was out now, he assured Bruce, so he would not get lost again.
Neither Ganawa nor Bruce objected, and Ray started out along an old moose or caribou trail. He did not expect to see any of this big game, because Ganawa had told the white lads that all the large animals leave the islands near the coast before the ice breaks up in spring. One thing, however, Ray did not know, the visit of the strange animal to the tepee during the preceding night. If he had known of that strange beast, he would have been afraid to go exploring by himself.