“I wouldn’t mind catching the fish, but I don’t much like the job of cutting through ice that must be all of ten inches or a foot thick,” yawned Roy. “But somebody must do it, I suppose, so I’ll make a try at it. Nothing short of a sight of Matt Coyle coming around the point could put much energy into me.”
“I was thinking about him,” said Joe, as he picked up an ax and whet-stone. “We thought we were safely out of his reach when we made our camp at No-Man’s Pond, and yet he found us easily enough. I wonder if we shall have a visit from him to-day.”
“Hardly,” replied Arthur. “Tom Bigden isn’t around to tell him that we’ve six thousand dollars stowed away among our luggage.”
Having mustered up energy enough to get upon his feet, Roy fastened on his skates, took a “water-scope” under his arm, put an ice-chisel on his shoulder, and disappeared behind the point of which he had spoken, leaving his companions to cut wood for the night. The mouth of Indian River, so turbulent and furious the last time Roy saw it, was now a sheet of glaring ice, over which he moved with long, graceful strokes. He stopped a hundred yards or so below the pond, and went to work with his chisel. It was a twenty minutes’ task to cut a hole through the ice and bail out the pieces, and when that had been done Roy pulled the cape of his heavy coat over his head to shut out all the light, and brought the water-scope into play. It was a wooden box two feet long and six inches square at one end, while the other widened out sufficiently to admit a boy’s face. In the smaller end was a piece of window glass, which Roy was careful to wipe with his glove before he put it into the water. These contrivances, made of heavy tin and japanned, are kept on sale now at most gun stores, and you can buy one for a dollar and a quarter; but this one, which Roy made himself, answered every purpose. With its aid he could locate a bright button at the bottom of a stream that was twenty feet deep, provided, of course, that the water was tolerably clear.
Throwing himself flat upon the ice, and drawing the cape of his coat over his head as I have described, Roy thrust the small end of the box into the water and buried his face in the other. There was a deep hole somewhere along that bank in which muscalonge were known to congregate, and Roy wanted to see if he had hit it. He looked at the bottom for about five seconds, and then threw back the cape, jerked the water-scope out of the hole, raised himself upon his knees, and sent up a yell that was so loud and unearthly that it brought Joe and Arthur around the point in great haste. They probably thought that Roy had been attacked by some wild animal, for they held their guns in their hands and were pushing the cartridges into them.
“Whoop-la!” shouted Roy. “I’ve struck it rich. Joe, I’ve found your canoe. Don’t believe it, do you? Well, look through that box and tell me what you see.”
Joe complied without saying a word, and one look was quite enough to excite him too. Then Arthur took a peep and said:
“Yes, sir; that’s the canoe, and there’s a rifle lashed fast to one of the thwarts. That’s my blanket—the red one with a blue stripe on the end. Now what’s to be done?”
“There’s something in that blanket, boys,” said Joe, after he had taken a second look, “and it is also tied to the canoe. How came those things at the bottom of the river, and where’s Matt Coyle?”
“And the money,” added Roy.