While Hugh unloaded the bales, Blaise went in search of a hiding place. Returning in a few minutes, he was surprised to find the boat, the prow of which had just touched the beach, now high and dry on the pebbles for half its length. Hugh had not pulled the boat up. The water had receded.
“There is a big old birch tree there in the woods and it is hollow,” Blaise reported. “It has been struck by lightning and is broken. We can hide the furs there.”
“Won’t squirrels or wood-mice get at them?”
“We will put bark beneath and over them, and we shall not leave them there long.”
“I hope not surely.”
Blaise lifted a bale and started into the woods. Hugh, with another bale, was about to follow, when Blaise halted him.
“Walk not too close to me. Go farther over there. If we go the same way, we shall make a beaten trail that no one could overlook. We must keep apart and go and come different ways.”
Hugh grasped the wisdom of this plan at once. He kept considerably to the left of Blaise until he neared the old birch, and on his return followed still another route. He was surprised to find that the water had come up again. The pebbles that had been exposed so short a time before were now under water once more. The bow of the bateau was afloat and he had to pull it farther up.
“There is a sort of tide in here,” he remarked as Blaise came out of the woods. “It isn’t a real tide, for it comes and goes too frequently. Do you know what causes it?”
“No, though I have seen the water come and go that way in some of the bays of the mainland.”