"Watch good, Tom," he said. "I may be gone some time."
"You'll find nothin'."
"Maybe so; maybe not."
The woods through which Henry now passed were yet wet, and every time he touched a bough or a sapling showers of little drops fell upon him. The patch of forest was dense and the trees large. The trees also grew straight upward, and Henry concluded at once that he would find a little distance ahead a ridge that sheltered this portion of the island from the cruel north and northwest winds.
His belief was verified as the rise began within three hundred yards. It ascended rather abruptly, having a total height of seventy or eighty feet, and seeming to cross the island from east to west. Standing under the shadow of a great oak Henry looked down upon the northern half of the island, which was quite different in its characteristics from the southern half. A portion of it was covered with dwarfed vegetation, but the rest was bare rock and sand. There were two or three inlets or landing places on the low shore. As the moonlight was now good, Henry saw all over this portion of the island, but he could not detect any sign of human habitation.
"I suppose Tom is right," he said to himself, "and that there is nothing to be seen."
But he had no idea of going back without exploring thoroughly, and he descended the slope toward the north. The way led for a little distance among the shrub bushes from which the raindrops still fell upon him as he passed, and then he came into an open space almost circular in shape and perhaps thirty yards in diameter. Almost in the center of the rock a spring spouted and flowed away through a narrow channel to the lake. On the far side of the spring rose four upright stakes in a row about six feet apart. Henry wondered what they meant and he approached cautiously, knowing that they had been put there by human hands.
Some drifting clouds now passed and the moonlight shone with a sudden burst of splendor. Henry was close to the stakes and suddenly he shuddered in every vein. They were about as high as a man's head, firmly fastened in the ground, and all of them were blackened and charred somewhat by fire, although their strength was not impaired. At the base of every one lay hideous relics. Henry shivered again. He knew. Here Indians brought their captives and burned them to death, partly for the sake of their own vengeance and partly to propitiate the mighty spirits that had their abode in the depths of the great lakes. He was sure that his comrades and he had landed upon a sacrificial island, and he resolved that they should depart at the very first light in the morning.
This island which had seemed so fine and beautiful to him suddenly became ghastly and repellent, but his second thought told him that they had nothing to fear at present. It was not inhabited. The warriors merely came here for the burnings, and then it was quite likely that they departed at once.
Henry examined further. On the bushes beyond the stakes he found amulets and charms of bone or wood, evidently hung there to ward off evil spirits, and among these bushes he saw more bones of victims. Then he noticed two paths leading away from the place, each to a small inlet, where the boats landed. Calculating by the moon and stars he could now obtain a general idea of the direction in which they had come and he was sure that the nearest part of the mainland lay to the west. He saw a dark line there, and he could not tell whether it was the shore or a low bank of mist.