Another week and it would be time to be returning, for spring comes all at once in the latitudes they were now in. There was still a portion of the country unexplored. Rory, from a hill-top, had caught sight of a distant lake, and was fired with the ambition to launch his fairy boat on its waters. On the very morning that Seth, Rory, and Allan set out to seek for this lake, with two of the brawniest hands of the crew to bear the boat, McBain came a little way with them.
“Take care of the boys, Seth,” he said, with a strange, melancholy smile playing over his face. “I had a queer dream last night. Be back to-morrow, mind, before nightfall.” The little party had their compasses, and therefore struck a bee-line through the forest in the direction in which they fancied the lake lay. On and on they went for miles upon miles, and at last reached the banks of a broad river, and here they encamped for lunch. Feeling refreshed, and hearing the roar of a cataract, apparently some way down the stream, they took their road along the banks to view it. They had not gone very far when they stood, thunderstruck, by the brink of a tremendous subterranean cavern. Thence came the roar of the cataract. The whole river disappeared suddenly into the bowels of the earth (a phenomenon not unknown to travellers in the wilds of America).
Marvelling much, they started off up-stream now, to seek for the lake.
After an hour’s walking, the forest all at once receded a good mile from the river, and the banks were no longer green, but banks of boulders mixed with silver sand and patches of snow. Here and there a bridge of solid snow spanned the river to great banks and hills of snow on the other side. As they climbed higher and higher, the river by their right met them with nearly all the speed of a cataract. But they can see the top of the hill at last, and yonder is the half-yellow, half-transparent stream leaping downwards as if over a weir.
And now they are up and the mystery is solved; the river is bursting over the lip of a great lake, which stretches out before them for many miles—forest on one side, hills beyond, and on the right a gigantic ridge of snow. They call the lake the Great Snow Lake.
They took their way to the left along its banks, going on through the woods that grew on its brink, until they came at last to an open glade, green and moss-covered. Here they encamped for rest, and soon after embarked on the strange lake, leaving the men to look after the preparation of dinner against the time of their return.
Rory was charmed with his boat; he sat in the bows sketching. Allan rowed, and Seth was busy fishing—no, trying to fish; but he soon gave up the attempt in despair, and almost at the same time Rory closed his sketch-book. Silence, and a strange indefinable gloom, seemed to settle down on the three. But there is silence everywhere around. Not a ripple is on the leaden lake, not a breath sighs through the forest. But, hark! a sullen plash in the water just round the point, and soon another and another.
“There is some water-monster bathing round yonder,” said Rory; “and indeed I believe it’s the land of enchantment we’re in altogether.”
They rounded the point, and found themselves in a bay surrounded by high banks of sand and gravel, portions of the sides of which, loosened by the thaw, were every now and then falling with a melancholy boom into the deep black water beneath. Sad, and more silent than ever, with a gloom on their hearts which they could not account for, they rowed away back to the spot where they had left their men.
There was no smoke to welcome them, and when they pushed aside the branches and rushed into the open, their hearts seemed to stand still with dread at the sight that met their eyes. Only the embers of a smouldering fire, and near it and beside it the two poor fellows they had left happy and well—dead and scalped!