They stored their food in as safe a spot as possible, though Pierre said that nothing would molest it, unless it might be a hungry hedgehog, but Adrian preferred to take no risks. Then with knives freshly sharpened on the rocks, and the gun in hand, they cautiously stepped into the canoe and pushed off.
“One should not jump into a birch. Easiest thing in the world to split the bottom,” its owner had explained.
Adrian had no desire to do anything that would hinder their success, therefore submitted to his guide’s dictation with a meekness that would have amused Margot.
She would not have been amused by their undertaking nor its but half-anticipated results. After a long and difficult warping-up the rapids, in which Adrian’s skill at using the sharp-pointed pole that helped to keep the canoe off the rocks surprised Ricord, they reached a dead water, with low, rush-dotted banks.
“Get her into that cove yonder, and keep still. I’ve brought some bark and’ll make a horn.”
There, while they rested and listened, Pierre deftly rolled his strip of birch-bark into a horn of two feet in length, small at the mouth end but several inches wide at the other. He tied it with cedar thongs and putting it to his lips, uttered a call so like a cow-moose that Adrian wondered more and more.
“Hmm. I thought I was pretty smart, myself; but I’ll step down when you take the stand.”
“’Sh-h-h! Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe, if you can help it.”
Adrian became rigid, all his faculties merged in that one desire to lose no sound.
Again Pierre gave the moose-call, and—hark! what was that? An answering cry, a far-away crashing of boughs, the onrush of some big creature, hastening to its mate.