“My sons,” he had told the boys, “Indians are not like white men, who say a few [[242]]words quickly. Indians need much time to talk. If you try to hurry them, they will tell you nothing.”
The old-time Indians were very superstitious, and each tribe and clan observed a kind of taboo on certain places. A lake where some one had drowned, a place where somebody had been killed or had met a serious and strange accident, was likely to be avoided for years or even for generations.
In his talk with the Ininiwac people, Ganawa had learned that a small island near shore about three miles east of their camp was one of those tabooed places. Years ago an Indian in a canoe who had been caught in a sudden squall had tried to take refuge on this islet, but a wave had thrown his canoe on shore and dashed him against a sharp rock, injuring him so severely that he died a few hours after the accident. Since then no Indian had set foot on the island and they had not even taken away the canoe of the dead man.
“My sons, would you be afraid to go to [[243]]this island with me?” Ganawa asked the boys. The lads assured him they would not be afraid, but they wondered what might be on the island to attract their guide, but Ganawa only smiled and said, “Come with me and see!”
The island itself is a beautiful spot, covered with trees and shrubs and the common northern flowers and small plants. It lies only a few rods from shore, and the three explorers found hidden under some bushes of this islet something which they wanted much more than a boat-load of gold rock. They found a staunch twenty-foot wooden boat on this uninhabited island.
“Father, how did you know it was here? Who left it?” Ray asked as soon as he saw it.
“The Ininiwac people told me about it, and it was left here by some white miners who dug for gold rock on shore. They found no gold rock and they went back to the white man’s country.”
Bruce was busy examining the boat. If [[244]]it was seaworthy or could be made so, there was a solution to the problem of reaching Michipicoten Island and the Island of Yellow Sands, the latter a small island in the middle of Lake Superior.
The boat did not look hopeless. It was dried out and showed a number of big cracks, but it was all sound. As Bruce looked around for oars, he discovered something which made his heart give a leap. There was a box with some three dozen nails, a hammer and a cold-chisel, and an old linsey-woolsey coat. “I can fix that boat! I can fix it!” Bruce exclaimed when he made this find; for Bruce had built and sailed boats on Lake Champlain. He caulked the cracks in the boat with strips of linsey-woolsey. He hewed a keel out of a young pine, and nailed it to the bottom of the boat. “She will sail safely now,” he said. He made other needed repairs and then hewed out two pairs of oars, so the islet looked like a pirate’s shipyard.
Michipicoten Island lies only ten miles [[245]]from the north shore of Lake Superior, but the distance from the mouth of the river is fully thirty-five miles in a southwesterly direction. The island, as seen from the deck of steamers, stands out boldly as a wooded mountain rising between eight hundred and a thousand feet above the level of the lake. Its north side drops steep into the lake without a single cove or bay to shelter even a rowboat.