Mr. Pennypacker smiled.
"It doesn't make any difference about Rome and Troy," he said. "You've been all the way down to New Orleans and you've fought in the East with the Continental troops. Your adventures have been fully as wonderful as those of Ulysses, and you have traveled a greater distance."
They sailed on all through the day, still seeing that low shore almost like a cloud bank on their right, but nothing save water ahead of them. Henry was sure that it was not above sixty miles across the lake, but he calculated that they had been blown about a great deal in the storm, and for all they knew the island might have been far out of their course.
It was evident that they could not reach the south shore before dusk, and they turned in toward the land. Shif'less Sol hailed the turning of the boat's course with delight.
"Boats are all right fur travelin'," he said, "when the wind's blowin' an' you've a sail. A lazy man like me never wants nothin' better, but when the night comes on an' you need to sleep, I want the land. I never feel the land heavin' an' pitchin' under me, an' it gives me more of a safe an' home feelin'."
"Watch, everybody, for a landing place," said Henry, "and Paul, you steer."
The green shore began to rise, showing a long unbroken wall of forest, but the dusk was coming too, and all of them were anxious to make land. Presently, they were only three or four hundred yards from the coast and they skimmed rapidly along it, looking for an anchorage. It was full night before Henry's sharp eyes saw the mouth of a creek almost hidden by tall grass, and, taking down the sail, they pulled the boat into it. They tied their craft securely to a tree, and the night passed without alarm.
They resumed the voyage early the next morning, and that day reached the southern coast of the lake. Here they reluctantly left the boat. They might have found a river emptying into the lake down which they could have gone a hundred or more miles further, but they were not sufficiently acquainted with this part of the country to spend their time in hunting for it. They drew their good little craft as far as they could among the weeds and bushes that grew at the water's edge.
"That's two good boats we've got hid on the water ways," said Shif'less Sol, "besides a half dozen canoes scattered here an' thar, an' mebbe we'll find 'em an' use 'em some day."
"This cost us nothin'," said Jim Hart, "so I reckon we ain't got any right to grieve, 'cause we're givin' up what we never paid fur."