Peter hammered the bundle of splinters home. "If we don't get meat in twelve hours we won't be able to travel fast—can't keep up steam," he said. "There's only one way to shoot game at night, and that's—"
"Jack light," said Horace, who recognized the device. "It's a regular pot-hunter's trick, but pot-hunters we are, and no mistake about that. I only hope it works."
CHAPTER XIV
Here where deer were plentiful and hunters scarce, Mac's jack light should prove effective. Sportsmen and the law have quite properly united in condemning killing deer by jack light; but the boys felt that their need of food justified their course.
After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch sapling about eight feet long, and trimmed off the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, he fitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, close to the bow; then he hung the blanket by its corners upon the projecting tips of the sapling, and thus screened the bow from the rest of the canoe.
As it had already become dark, and the shores were now black with the indistinct shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set the canoe gently into the water. When it was afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters, which crackled and flared up like a torch.
"You'd make a better game poacher than I, Horace," he said. "You take the rifle, and I'll paddle."
Horace accordingly placed himself just behind the blanket screen, with the weapon on his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, who did not want to be left behind, seated himself amidships.
"Keep a sharp lookout, both of you," Mac said. "Watch for the light on their eyes, like two balls of fire."