The breeze stiffened and she quickly dropped out of sight. Nor did they see any other human being that day. At night they anchored close inshore, among bushes and reeds, where they remained undisturbed until the morning. The remainder of the journey down the river passed in the same peace and ease, and then Paul, who was in the prow, caught a glimpse of a broad expanse which looked silvery white in the distance.
"The lake! the lake!" he cried eagerly.
They swept triumphantly over the last reach of the river and out upon the broad bosom of Lake Erie. In their earlier voyage down the Mississippi they had learned how to use a sail, and now when they were about a mile from land they took in the sail and looked about them.
The great inland fresh water seas of North America aroused the greatest interest, even awe, among the earlier explorers, and there was not one among the five who did not look with eager eyes upon the ocean of waters. They were better informed, too, than the average woodsman concerning the size and shape of this mighty chain.
"You look west and you look south an' you don't see nothin' but water," said Long Jim.
"And they say that the whole grand chain is fifteen hundred miles long," said Paul, "and that Lake Superior reaches a width of three hundred miles."
"It's a lot o' water," said Shif'less Sol, trailing his hand over the side, "an' while I'd like to explore it, I guess that the sooner we cross it the better it will be for what we're tryin' to do."
"You're right," said Henry. "We'll set the sail again and tack as fast as we can to the south."
The sail was set, and the boat, heeling over under a good breeze, moved rapidly. Paul and Henry watched with pleasure the white water foaming away on either side of the prow, and Long Jim also watched the trailing wake at the stern. Used to rivers but not to lakes, they did not really appreciate what dangers might await them on the bosom of Erie. Meanwhile the lake presented to them a most smiling surface. The waters rippling before the wind lay blue under a blue sky. The wind with its touch of damp was fresh and inspiring. Behind them the shore, with its great wall of green, sank lower and lower, until at last it passed out of sight. Long Jim, who sat in the stern watching, then spoke.
"Boys," he said, "fur the fust time in the life uv any uv us thar ain't no land. Look to the east an' look to the west, look to the north an' look to the south an' thar ain't nothin' but water. The world uv land hez left us."