"Fine and dandy!" exclaimed Charley. "I was sure you'd lost her, and I'm so glad she's all right after all."
"Well, now," said Skipper Zeb, "this was once Mother was right when she pesters me to come and look at un. I thinks we'd lost she sure, but I says, 'That's the way o' things,' and I don't worry. Though we'd have missed she at the fishin', we'd be gettin' on, and 'twasn't worth a worry, whatever."
There was great rejoicing when Skipper Zeb and the boys arrived at Double Up Cove early in the afternoon with the big trap boat, and the small boat in tow. Mrs. Twig and Violet saw them coming, and were at the beach to meet them, and Mrs. Twig actually shed tears of joy.
"Snug and tight as ever!" announced Skipper Zeb, as the prow touched the shore. "We gets she all fixed up, Mother. I'm thinkin' you knows more about boats than I does."
"I'm so glad!" and Mrs. Twig's round face was wreathed in smiles while glad tears glistened in her eyes. "Now you and the lads must be wonderful hungry, for 'tis near two hours after dinner time, and dinner's been waitin' this long while."
"Aye, hungry as seven bears and as happy and perky as a cock pa'tridge," boomed Skipper Zeb. "We'll make the boats fast, and be right up."
What an appetite Charley had! And when he learned that the delicious roast meat was a cut of the lynx that he and Toby had killed the night before, his natural prejudice against unaccustomed food did not prevent him from taking a second helping.
Charley scarce had time to think of home. Skipper Zeb was quite aware that the best antidote for homesickness is work, with little time to ruminate, and he kept Charley busy from morning till night with himself and Toby doing the most interesting things imaginable, and, with all the other work, the boys visited their rabbit snares each day and set new ones. The week passed quickly, and on Saturday evening, when they sat down to supper, Skipper Zeb announced:
"Well, now, here 'tis time to go to the path and set up the traps. We'll be leavin' Monday marnin', lads."
This was an adventure to which Charley had looked forward with keen anticipation since Skipper Zeb had first announced that he and Toby were to accompany him. Reaching away for countless miles in every direction from the water's edge lay the vast primordial, boundless wilderness. What unfathomed mysteries it held! There it slept as it had slept through the silence of unnumbered ages since the world was formed, untrod by the white man's foot, known only to wild Indian hunters, as primitive as the wilderness itself. What strange beasts lived in its far fastnesses! What marvelous lakes, what great rivers, what mountain peaks waited there to be discovered! What a wonderful sensation it would be to penetrate the hem of its outer edge beyond the sight and reach of even Skipper Zeb's frontier cabin.