“That is only a tale, of course,” said Hugh somewhat disdainfully. “We of the ship Otter camped here several days and we saw or heard no spirits. We found nothing to fear.”
“You sought no copper,” was the retort. “It is said that sometimes Kepoochikan and Nanibozho fight together on the rocks and hurl great boulders about. Strange tales there are too of the thick forest, of the little lakes and bays. There is one place called the Bay of Manitos, where, so I have heard, dwell giant Windigos and great serpents and huge birds and spirits that mock the lonely traveller with shouts and threats and laughter.”
“Surely you do not believe such tales, Blaise,” Hugh protested, “or fear such spirits.”
“I know that neither Kepoochikan nor Nanibozho made the world,” the younger boy replied seriously. “My father and the priests taught me that the good God made the world. But whether the tales of giants and spirits are true, I know not. That I do not fear them I have proved by coming here with you.”
To that remark Hugh had no answer. To believe or be inclined to believe such tales and yet to come to the enchanted island, to come with only one companion, surely proved his half-brother’s courage. Indeed the older boy had no thought of questioning the younger’s bravery. He had come to know Blaise too well.
XVI
THE CACHE
The night being clear, the boys did not trouble to prepare a shelter. They merely cut some balsam branches and spread them smoothly on the beach. Strange to say, the more superstitious half-breed lad fell asleep immediately, while the white boy, who had scorned the notion of giants and manitos, found sleep long in coming. That night seemed to him the loneliest he had ever spent. Camp, on the trip down and up the main shore, had, to be sure, usually been made far from the camps of other men. But there were men, both red and white, on that shore. When the lake was not too rough, there was always the chance that the sound of human voices and the dip of paddles might be heard at any time during the night, as a canoe passed in the starlight.
Here, however, the whole length and breadth of the great island,—which the two lads believed even larger than it really is, some fifty miles in length and twelve or fourteen broad at its widest part,—there lived, so far as they knew, not one human being. Never before had Hugh felt so utterly lonely, such a small, insignificant human creature in an unknown and unfeeling wilderness of woods, waters and rocks. The island was far more beautiful and hospitable now than it had appeared when he visited it before, but then, almost uncannily lonely and remote though the place had seemed, he had had the companionship of Baptiste and Captain Bennett and the rest of the ship’s crew.
Yet what was there to fear? It was not likely that Isle Royale contained any especially fierce beasts. There were wolves and lynxes, but they were skulking, cowardly creatures, and, in the summer at least, must find plentiful prey of rabbits and other small animals. Moose too there were and perhaps bears, but both were harmless unless attacked and cornered. It was not the thought of any animal enemy that caused Hugh’s uneasiness, as he lay listening to the night sounds. His feeling was rather of apprehension, of dread of some unknown evil that threatened his comrade and himself. He tried to shake off the unreasonable dread, but everything about him seemed to serve to intensify the feeling, the low, continuous murmur of the waves on the rocks, the swishing rustle of the wind in the trees, the long-drawn, eerie cries of two loons answering one another somewhere up the bay, the lonely “hoot-ti-toot” of an owl. Once from the wooded ridges above him, there came with startling clearness the shrill screech of a lynx. But all these sounds were natural ones, heard many times during his adventurous journey. Why, tonight, did they seem to hold some new and fearful menace?
Disgusted with himself, he resolved to conquer the unreasonable dread. Will power alone could not triumph over his unrest, but physical weariness won at last and he fell asleep. A brief shower, from the edge of a passing storm-cloud, aroused him once, but the rain did not last long enough to wet his blanket, and he was off to sleep again in a few minutes.