The others were watching him closely. They guessed something of the nature of what must be passing through Ned's mind, for both Jack and Teddy followed his gaze up the uneven shore. Jimmy had the glasses again, and was busily engaged in scrutinizing the blur on the distant horizon, which all of them had agreed must be smoke hovering close to the water. Perhaps he half-believed the fanciful suggestion made by Teddy, with reference to Captain Kidd, and was wildly hoping to discover some positive sign that would stamp this fairy story with truth. All the previous adventures that had befallen himself and chums would sink into utter insignificance, could they go back home and show evidences of having made such a romantic discovery up there in the Hudson Bay country.
"See the feather they say he always wore in his hat, Jimmy?" asked Frank.
"Nothing doin' yet that way," replied the other, without allowing even the ghost of a smile to appear on his freckled face; "so if you please, we'll let the matter drop for the time bein'. Who knows what may happen before we get back to New York? 'Tis a great old country, so they say, for all sorts of queer things to crop up. You needn't be surprised at anything here, they tell me. And I've made up me mind to take it as it comes, and not let anything faze me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Teddy."
"And I'm wondering," mused the one particularly addressed, "what that ancient but bold explorer, Hendrick Hudson, said when he had sailed all the way around this great bay, and found that it was after all a land-locked arm of the sea. When he first entered it, history tells us he had great hopes that he had found what Columbus was searching for when he made his western voyage, a way of reaching the East Indies by a water route. It must have been a keen disappointment when Hendrick had to turn north, and then east again, always fended off by the land."
Ned had by now determined that they ought to turn to the left in continuing the forward movement. He next looked for some landmark, by means of which on their return that they might know just where they should plunge into the woods, so as to follow their trail back to where the precious canoes were secreted.
As though he found nothing in the arrangement of the shore or the trees themselves to stamp it different from other places, Ned stooped down and placed several stones upon each other at the foot of a stunted oak.
That was an old trick among the scouts. Many such a stone cairn had they fashioned when playing some game of fox and geese, to serve as a sign to those who were following in their wake.
"We ought to see this, and remember that it tells us where we struck the beach," he explained to his chums, as he rose up again after completing his work.
Both guides had been watching what he did with more or less interest. Of course, they understood that the scouts had learned many of the ways practiced by woodsmen, for by now the real meaning of the khaki uniforms worn by the boys had been fully grasped by Francois and the Cree; though for a long time they had had hard work to understand why Ned and his chums were not to be looked upon as soldiers.
"Zere ees nozzing better zan a pile of stones to mark ze way," admitted the voyageur. "I haf myself used zat many times. But be sure zat you notice other things besides. It may be, an enemy he move ze stones some ozzer place, and if zat be so you all get twist up when you try to come back."