"I guess dad's quite right, but his way of staying with it gets riling now and then."
Frank laughed. One day when Harry had hurt his knee and there was no work of any consequence on hand, Mr. Oliver had taken him out into the bush, and the boy had a painful recollection of the journey they had made together. No thicket was too dense or thorny for the rancher to scramble through, and he prowled about the steepest slopes and amongst the thickest tangles of fallen logs with the same unflagging persistency until at the first shot he killed a deer. Mr. Oliver was, as his son and Jake sometimes said, a stayer, one who invariably put through what he took in hand. He was the kind of person Frank aspired to become, though he was discovering that he was not likely to accomplish it by taking things easily. Success, it seemed, could only be attained by ceaseless effort and constant carefulness.
He went on with the logging, though the work was remarkably heavy, and it was an occupation he had no liking for, but he helped Harry to finish the paddles after supper. Then they carried a bundle of spruce twigs down to the canoe, and, though there was not much wind, tied a reef in the sloop's mainsail, which Mr. Oliver had insisted on before they loosed the moorings.
An hour later and shortly before low water they let go the anchor in a lane of water which wound into a stretch of sloppy sand. It was just deep enough for the sloop to creep into with her centerboard up, and the flats ran back from it into a thin mist on either side. It was very cold and the deck glittered in the pale moonlight white with frost. Frank stood up looking about him while Harry arranged the twigs in the canoe, but there was very little to see. The sky was hazy, the moon was encircled by a halo, and wet sand and winding water glimmered faintly. At one point he could dimly make out the dark loom of an island, but there was no sign of the beach in front of him. Though he could feel a light wind on his face, it was very still, except for the ripple of water and the occasional splash of undermined sand falling into the channel, which seemed startlingly distinct. Once he heard a distant calling of wildfowl, but it died away again.
Dropping into the canoe when his companion was ready he took up one of the longer paddles. The water was quite smooth and they made good progress, but Harry did not seem satisfied.
"If I'd had any sense I'd have brought a pole to shove her with," he complained. "It's handier in shallow water and the ducks seem to be a long way up. A creek that runs out on the beach makes this channel."
Frank paddled on, watching the sloppy banks slide by and the palely gleaming strip of water run back into the haze in front of him until at last it forked off into two branches.
"We'll try this one," said Harry. "I believe it works right around behind the island. The flood should come up that end first, and it ought to drive the feeding birds back over the sands to us."
The water got deeper as they proceeded, for Frank could feel no bottom when he sank his blade, but there was no sign of any duck until at last they heard a faint quacking in the mist. Soon afterward there was a shrill scream as a flock of some of the smaller waders wheeled above their heads.
"Now," said Harry, "we'll try Jake's idea. If the ducks aren't on the water they'll be along the edge of it where the bank's soft. You don't often find them feeding where the sand's dry and hard."