The boys were tired enough to be drowsy as soon as they had finished supper. Little by little their conversation flagged; the chance of finding diamonds ceased to interest them, and presently they built up the fire and crawled into their sleeping-bags. It was a cold night, and except for the occasional cry of a hunting owl or lynx, the wilderness was silent as death.
The boys were up early the next morning; smoke was rising from their fire before the sun was well off the horizon. The weather seemed slightly warmer, and a wind was rising from the west, but it was not strong enough to impede them.
After breakfast, they repacked the kit on the toboggan. The spot had been home for a night; now nothing was left except a pile of crushed twigs and a few black brands on the trampled snow.
The travelers were fresh again; now they settled down to a long, steady stroke that carried them on rapidly. Three times they had to land to pass round open rapids or dangerous ice, but about eleven o'clock Macgregor saw what he had been looking for. It was a spot where several trees had been cut down on the shore. A rather faint trail showed through the cedar thickets. It was the beginning of the main portage that ran three miles northwest, straight across country to the Abitibi River. They had been mortally afraid of overrunning the spot.
They boiled the noon kettle of tea to fortify themselves for the long crossing. Then they unshipped the runners from the toboggan, put on their moccasins and snowshoes, and started ashore across a range of low, densely wooded hills.
The trail was blazed at long intervals, but not cleared, and it was hard, exasperating work to get the toboggan through the snowy tangle. After two hours they came out on the crest of a hill overlooking a great river that ran like a gleaming steel-blue ribbon far into the north.
"The Abitibi!" cried Macgregor.
They had come a good seventy miles from Waverley. At that rate, they might expect to reach their destination the next day; and, greatly encouraged, they coasted on the toboggan down to the ice, and set out again on skates.
During the tramp the sky had grown hazy, and the northwest wind was blowing stronger. For some time it was not troublesome, for it came from the left, but it continued to freshen, and the clouds darkened ominously.
Late in the afternoon the travelers came suddenly upon the second of the known landmarks. From the west a smaller river, nameless, as far as they knew, poured past a bluff of black granite into the Abitibi, making a fifty-yard stretch of open water that tumbled and foamed with a hoarse uproar among ice-bound boulders. Here they had to change their course, for according to Macgregor's calculation, it was about fifty miles up this river that the cabin stood.