A flush crept into Harry's face, but he answered quietly:
"Well, it's perhaps as well we went, because I can tell you what the Siwash were watching for. We saw the schooner."
Mr. Barclay gave a sudden start and cast a significant glance at Mr. Oliver.
"The dramatic climax! There's no doubt you have sprung it upon us smartly, but now you have worked it off you can go ahead with the tale."
Harry told him what they had seen and when he had finished Mr. Barclay seemed to be considering the matter ponderously. Then he turned to Mr. Oliver.
"It seems to me there's nothing more to keep us here."
"No," said the rancher. "On the other hand, it might, perhaps, be better if we waited until those canoes arrive—if it's only for the look of the thing."
His companion made a sign of agreement and neither one said anything further on the subject. The boys lounged about the beach and gathered delicious berries in the woods most of the day, and on the following day two more canoes ran in. Their crews had, however, traded off their peltries somewhere else, and shortly after their arrival Mr. Oliver and his party left the inlet in the canoe which he had sent the Indians back to bring. The weather had changed in the night, and when they paddled down the strip of sheltered water their ears were filled with the clamor of the surf, and the hillsides were lost in thin drizzle and sliding mist. A filmy spray cloud hung about the entrance, and beyond it big, gray combers tipped with froth came rolling up in long succession. The sight of them affected Frank disagreeably, and he was not astonished when Mr. Oliver, who spoke to one of the Indians, suggested that he and Harry had better help with the spare paddles until they were far enough off shore to get the masts up.
Frank found it hard enough work, for the sea was almost ahead and the canoe lurched viciously, pitching her bows out. The crag beyond the inlet, however, still slightly sheltered them, and straining at the paddle with the rain in their faces they made shift to drive her over the big, gray-sided ridges, though every now and then the frothing top of one came splashing in. At length one of the Siwash lifted the short mast forward into its place, and thrusting in the sprit, shook loose the sail. His companion, who knelt aft gripping a long-bladed paddle, seized the sheet, and the craft, gathering speed, headed out toward the point to lee of them. When she had cleared it the Siwash raised a second mast farther aft, and setting the sail upon it, slacked both sheets, after which the canoe drove away at what seemed to Frank an astonishing pace. As a matter of fact, she was traveling very fast, for a narrow, shallow-bodied craft of that kind is very speedy so long as the wind is more or less behind her.
Sitting with his back against her hove-up weather side he noticed rather uneasily that the opposite one was almost level with the brine. Then he glanced astern at the combers that followed them, and was by no means comforted by the sight. They were unlike the short, tumbling waves he had seen already in land-locked water, for they were larger and longer, and swept up with a kind of stately swing until they broke into seething foam. Their rise and fall seemed measured, and they rolled on in their ceaseless march in well-ordered ranks. It struck him that the canoe was carrying a dangerous press of sail, but nobody else appeared disturbed, and he admitted that the Indians probably knew how much it was safe to spread.