"What a solitary outlook!" said Helen, casting her eye from shore to shore. "Not another boat to be seen, and on land nothing but woods."
"It's a mighty picturesque spot, though," said the Chaplain, who was using his paddle a few yards to the right. "It is like the sea of glass spoken of in Revelations, reflecting the sky of the Orient."
"Or like the paradise of the houries," cried Captain Cummings, "where the wood nymphs bathe in the lake and bask in the golden sunlight."
"It is the promise of a fertile country," said Lieutenant Smith, "which needs the woodsman's axe to clear it, and the toil of the settler to cover it with happy homes."
"Yes, and to make it yield its thirty, sixty and a hundred fold," echoed the Chaplain.
"Mon Dieu! but you are all wrong," exclaimed Beaumont, taking off his hat and shaking his curly head. "It is just the forest of Penetang, where the Iroquois and Hurons fought for ages, and where the Jesuits of my people shed their life's blood and died among a race of unbelievers."
"That means, Doctor, that it resembles itself," chimed in Helen, with a laugh. "You are echoing ancient history—I would say it is like a Quaker's hood, the water is the face of the wearer, the tall trees all round it are the edge of the bonnet, the mouth of the harbor is the chin, and the little islands beyond are the untied strings."
A general laugh followed.
"Bravo!" shouted Cummings. "But what are you going to do with my nymphs in your Quaker bonnet?"
"Put them behind the island where they cannot be seen," was her answer.