Only the mocking echoes of their own questions came back to them.
"Beat the water with the paddle. Danny," advised Reade after they had waited for some moments. "We've more than a mile to go. Whip up the water. If you get tired, pass the paddle back to me."
"I'm not sorry to get away from that place," breathed Dalzell, after at least a hundred lusty strokes.
"Nor I," confessed Reade. "I'm beginning to get a headache already from trying to figure out what it all meant. Danny, describe that haunting face just as you saw it."
"Ugh! I hate to think about it again," protested Dalzell.
"You'll think about it more than once," retorted Tom. "You won't be able to help that, I promise you. So go ahead and describe the face as you saw it."
Dan did so, Tom listening attentively.
"Then that wasn't a case of imagination," Tom declared gravely.
"If we had imagined it, each would have seen a different face.
But the face that you describe, Danny, is the one that I also
saw. Pass back the paddle, please. I want a little exercise."
Tom still had the paddle when he shot the canoe in close to the camp.
"Any luck?" called Dave, who had already returned with a string of perch.