"I am with you."
"I did not expect to find anything like a flat surface here," continued the lieutenant, as he started to walk towards a high bluff in the direction from which they had come.
It was only a couple of rods from the water, and the flat space where they had come ashore was evidently made by the caving of the earth along the bluff, when the river had been even higher than at present. It was a hill which had possibly turned the river aside from its westerly course to the south at some remote period in the past. There was just such a bluff on the other side of the tongue of land, and possibly a hill there had again changed the river's course to the westward. But Deck's theory explained the presence of the fortunate flat where they had landed.
"Now we must find a way to get up on the hill above the high bluff," said he, as he led the way up the river.
Beyond the bluff the bank of the river was the same as it had been all the way from the fort, and the flat came to a sudden ending.
"Here is a flatboat," said Ben, who was the first to discover it. "Somebody must live near here."
"This looks like a path up the bank," added Deck, who had been studying the river above. "I think this must be a ferry, Ben; though I should suppose the ferryman would find it hard work to get through the current that brought us down."
It was plain that some work had been done on the path leading up the bank, which was diagonal with the steep slope. It had been dug out, and in the steepest parts there was something built for a fence or a hand-rail. On the opposite side of the river from Robertsport there was a road to the one extending from Harrison to Somerset. Doubtless the ferry, if there was one, was for the use of travellers into Wayne County, all of which lay on the south side of the river.
The fugitives were ready to mount the bluff by the path; but first they went back to the boat, which might be of use to them later if they had occasion to renew the voyage down the stream. They drew it back, and concealed it behind a huge rock which the current had laid bare. Then they mounted the path to the top of the bluff. Not ten rods from the shore they found a cabin, around which were some fruit-trees and the dried stalks of corn, showing that the land had been cultivated.
"This is some negro's house," said Ben, as they halted under a tree not two rods from the cabin, which was nothing more than a shanty.