It was not yet break of day when the boys got out of their bunks, all eager, fresh from the night of solid rest. Their breakfasting was done in a hurry, since it was their intention to be far out on the lake at sunrise or a few minutes thereafter.
Paul Bird grabbed up the camera as they started away from the camp, remarking that he might need some pictures of himself catching the longest string of the biggest fish.
“I surely hope the lake is well frozen over,” said Lanky, as he stooped with the others at the shore line and adjusted his skates.
“It is.” Frank got to his feet and glided around easily. “The lake has been chilled a long time and it hasn’t required very much of this freezing temperature to put a thick surface on it.”
The boys had found four inches of ice at a point an eighth of a mile from shore, and they had little reason to expect that thinner ice would occur anywhere else.
Before they left, they built a good fire in the living room, there being two reasons in the mind of Frank for doing this. First, it would be comfortable when they came in, probably considerably chilled, and second, the smoke would guide them when they were ready to return to the camp.
Out over the lake they started, all four of them swinging along rhythmically, all four having guns strapped on their backs, their fishing lines carried in small packs in one hand, while Paul carried his camera in the free hand, and Lanky carried an axe.
They were fully a mile from shore, going across what appeared to be the narrow end of the lake, when the first of the sun’s rays came up to light a waiting world.
“Fellows,” muttered Frank, as he looked and saw the colors change and merge one into the other and then become bolder in shade as the sun’s rays shot over the horizon, “if a painter were to put that on a canvas, if it were possible for him to do it, people would criticise him and say it wasn’t true to nature.”
“I believe you’re right,” Lanky agreed. “I would never have believed it myself—yet there it is. It isn’t well to criticise a person too quickly about a thing of this kind. You never know what he saw. Paul,” he added as he turned toward his chum, “you can’t get that, can you?” nodding his head toward the sunrise.