"The long canoe still goes south," said Tayoga. "It is now many miles away, hunting for us. Perhaps since they cannot find us, the Hurons will conclude that the storm sank us in the lake!"
"But they will hunt along the shore a long time," said Willet. "They're nothing but a tiny speck now, and in a quarter of an hour they'll be out of sight altogether. Suppose we cross the lake behind them—I think I see a cove down there on the western side—take the canoe with us and wait until they go back again."
"A wise plan," said Tayoga.
In another hour their deerskins were dry, and reclothing themselves they returned the canoe to the lake, the Hurons still being invisible. Then they crossed in haste, reached the cove that Willet had seen, and plunged into the deep woods, taking the canoe with them, and hiding their trail carefully. When they had gone a full three miles they came to rest in a glade, and every one of the three felt that it was time. Muscles and nerves alike were exhausted, and they remained there all the rest of the day and the following night, except that after dark Tayoga went back to the lake and saw the long canoe going northward.
"I don't think we'll be troubled by that band of Hurons any more," he reported to his comrades. "They will surely think we have been drowned, and tomorrow we can continue our own journey to the south."
"And on the whole, we've come out of it pretty well," said Willet.
"With the aid of Manitou, who so generously sent us the second storm," said Tayoga.
They brought the canoe back to the lake at dawn, and hugging the western shore made leisurely speed to the south, until they came to the neighborhood of the French works at Carillon, when they landed again with their canoe, and after a long and exhausting portage launched themselves anew on the smaller but more splendid lake, known to the English as George and to the French as Saint Sacrement. Now, though, they traveled by night and slept and rested by day. But Lake George in the moonlight was grand and beautiful beyond compare. Its waters were dusky silver as the beams poured in floods upon it, and the lofty shores, in their covering of dark green, seemed to hold up the skies.
"It's a grand land," said Robert for the hundredth time.
"It is so," said Tayoga. "After Manitou had practiced on many other countries he used all his wisdom and skill to make the country of the Hodenosaunee."