“There’s no saying how far I should have to tramp to go round the lake,” he said, as he turned the question over in his mind, “but the other shore can’t be very distant. The swim will do me good and I’ll take it.”
He began groping along the shore in quest of the material with which to make the float. It was while he was doing this that he uttered an exclamation of delight over another unexpected piece of good fortune. He almost fell over the prow of a canoe drawn lightly up the bank where its owner had left it. The graceful craft was a dozen feet long and the broad-bladed paddle lay in the bottom ready for use whenever needed.
“If that isn’t rare luck then there was never such a thing,” added Harvey after examining the primitive boat, which, Indian fashion, was constructed of birch bark sewed and gummed together and thoroughly water-tight. He knew something of canoes, shells and motor boats and had no misgiving of his ability to handle this craft.
But what of the owner? Where was he and when was he likely to return? Suppose he was a hunter or woodman who would discover him before he could get far from shore? What treatment would he deal out to the one that was running off with his property?
Hoping that the man might be near and could be hired to set him on the other side, Harvey called “Hello!” three or four times, in a voice that carried several hundred yards. There was no reply however, a fact which convinced him that even if the owner soon returned the one who was making use of his property would be beyond rifle range.
Night was advancing and Harvey did not linger. He laid his outer coat in the farther end, and stepping carefully into the unstable structure, picked up the paddle, and pressing it against the bank, pushed the canoe well out upon the placid bosom of the lake. Taking his bearings, he glanced often at the sky and with the aid of the constellation Ursa Major (which always seemed to confront him when he looked into the sky), he proceeded as truly as if steering by compass. The paddle was light, with a broad blade at one end. Facing the way he was going, he dipped it first on the right and then the left, so gently that he caused only a faint ripple and made no noise.
He smiled at the discovery which came within the following five minutes. The wooded shore in front loomed to sight at the same time with the terminus of the lake on his right. A detour of two hundred yards would have led him around the body of water, and a swim for the same distance would have landed him on the shore opposite his starting point.
“I hope the owner won’t feel offended when he finds his canoe has been shifted to another point, for he won’t have to travel far to get it again.”
A few minutes later, Harvey drew the boat up the bank and resumed his journey toward the workshop of Professor Morgan. It will be remembered that he was now quite near the little town of Dawson, which he left to the right. He held to his bearings so well that he came directly upon the place where the trail turned off from the highway and began picking his course to the cabin.
He was now “skating on thin ice.” The inventor might be going to the Washington House for his evening meal, or possibly returning therefrom. In either case, the utmost caution was necessary to avert a meeting with him. The trail over which Harvey was advancing with the utmost care may be described as an alley or avenue or cañon, walled in for most of the way by rocks and overhanging trees, with open places at intervals, where the star-gleam showed objects indistinctly for a hundred feet or less.