"You haven't said you disbelieve, no!" Ross exclaimed with anger suddenly re-flaring. "But don't you suppose I can tell what you're thinking?
"You think I told you a fairy story about the things I saw from my plane, don't you? You think I dragged you two up here on the wildest wild-goose chase, to look for incredible creatures that could never have existed. You believe that, don't you?"
"Oh, damn these mosquitoes!" said Gray, slapping viciously at his neck and staring with unfriendly eyes at the aviator.
Woodin took command. "We'll go over this after we've made camp. Jim, get out the dufflebags. Ross, will you rustle firewood?"
They both glared at him and at each other, but grudgingly they obeyed. The tension eased for the time.
By the time darkness fell on the little riverside clearing, the canoe was drawn up on the bank, their trim little balloon-silk tent had been erected, and a fire crackled in front of it. Gray fed the fire with fat knots of pine while Woodin cooked over it coffee, hot cakes, and the inevitable bacon.
The firelight wavered feebly up toward the tall trunks of giant hemlocks that walled the little clearing on three sides. It lit up their three khaki-clad, stained figures and the irregular white block of the tent. It gleamed out there on the riffles of the McNorton, chuckling softly as it flowed on toward the Little Whale.
They ate silently, and as wordlessly cleaned the pans with bunches of grass. Woodin got his pipe going, the other two lit crumpled cigarettes, and then they sprawled for a time by the fire, listening to the chuckling, whispering river-sounds, the sighing sough of the higher hemlock branches, the lonesome cheeping of insects.
Woodin finally knocked his pipe out on his boot-heel and sat up.
"All right," he said, "now we'll settle this argument we were having."