At last peace was declared, and the tired people of both nations but of the one race, wondered what they had been fighting about.
Without solving the question they smoked the calumet, offering up the fumes as incense while they fervently prayed that the tyrannies of life should never again force them to draw swords against each other.
To Penetang, however, the din of battle did not come. Month after month during that first long summer, the troops revelled in the ways of peace; and it was astonishing what progress they made in the practice of the mechanical arts. In Captain Payne's engineering corps were carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, saddlers, tailors, and men who had followed a dozen other trades—all useful, aye, more than useful—in the founding and establishment of the new garrison.
By the end of August the walls of the stone fort were up and an army of men were working with energy towards its completion. The design was to have it ready for occupation before winter arrived. The trail cut through to Little York had also proved of service, for as the months passed by, mail matter and goods were carried regularly over to Penetang.
While all else denoted prosperity, the non-return of the Bumble Bee caused much anxiety; for throughout the long summer nothing was heard of it, not a single word came from either Corporal or Skipper. Many were the conjectures, and night after night was the subject discussed around the camp fires of the little garrison.
Mrs. Bond had a little room in Mrs. Hardman's quarters, and from her larger experience and fuller confidence in her husband, she was the more hopeful of the two.
"Whatever has happened to Latimer, Peter Bond will be sure to come back. He's the honestest man alive, and he'd die before he'd turn traitor," were her words.
"That's true; but suppose the Yankees 'ave shot the men and cabbaged the boat?" suggested her pessimistic friend.
"It might be," returned Mrs. Bond, tightly drawing in her lips, "but the Bumble Bee wasn't a fighting craft. Yankees might steal her, and all she 'ad aboard, but it wouldn't be natural for 'em to kill the men. They'll both turn up sometime. I'll warrant that."
"She's just right," returned Private Hardman. "They may 'ave taken 'em prisoners and looted the craft, but that's the worst that could 'ave 'appened 'em."