The boys laughed at the idea and Alex said no more about the proposed excursion, but Clay suggested to Captain Joe after the others were in their bunks:
“We must watch that little rascal, or he’ll get up in the night and run over there. He’s always doing tricks of that kind, and some time he’ll get into serious trouble.”
Captain Joe pretended to regard the situation as very serious, and said that he would see that Alex didn’t get away from the boat that night. With this Clay seemed contented. The old captain insisted on keeping watch again that night, but if the boys had been about the deck they would have seen very little of him, for all that.
As soon as the others were asleep, the captain untied the tow line of the canoe, stepped softly into it, and paddled away in the direction of the north shore. So far as possible he kept the bulk of the Rambler between himself and the point where the light had been seen.
Reaching the margin of the bay, he turned to the east and paddled straight to the mouth of the west river. After an hour of steady work, he reached a point a little east and directly north of Point aux Outardes. Nothing could be seen of the fire or the figures about it from the north, and the captain boldly crossed the arm of the bay stretching in behind Cartier island. In half an hour he was on the island itself, and separated only by a few rods of mingled rocks and bushes from the point.
Advancing cautiously to the south he came within view of the blaze and within hearing of much of the conversation going on there.
The night hours passed slowly. The moon swung to the south and off to the west, and the shadows lay long in the forest before the old captain moved from his point of observation. Then with a chuckle he crept back to his canoe, and long before the boys were out of their bunks he was fishing over the gunwale of the Rambler in the most innocent manner imaginable. The old fellow chuckled as he dropped his line.
“That bay stretching in behind the peninsula,” he mused, “looks to me just as it did a good many years ago. No improvements seem to have been made there notwithstanding the work of the surveyors, and the country is just as desolate as it was then. If I had had a little more time I might have paddled up to the mouth of the west river and looked over the situation there, but daylight showed too soon.”
“What’s that you’re muttering about?” asked Alex clapping a hand on the old captain’s arm. “You must be talking in your sleep.”
“Not that any one knows of,” chuckled the old captain. “I was only saying that from here the country looks exactly as it used to.”