“I thought I’d let Howard go along with him to tend the engine. Morrel can steer.”
“If you want her to go to the left, Til,” said Harry, soberly, “you just pull on this rope, and for the right—”
“Think you can remember that, Til?” said Roy Carpenter.
“You fellows make me tired,” grumbled Tilford Morrel.
The Swan, on her last voyage under scout auspices, went majestically down the stream into the broad expanse of the lake, and headed for Port Henry. Here she waited for the rest of the troop, and then the greater part of their camp property was sent on to Oakwood to herald their approach. But they kept enough for bivouac camping, in case they should decide to tramp as far as Albany before taking the train.
If you were to search to-day for the spot where the Oakwood boys camped all summer, you would find no distinguishing mark, no defacing of ground or tree, no unsightly can or battered paper box,—nothing unless, perchance, the initials “G. L.” obscurely graven here and there. Thus the scout comes and goes, and none shall be the wiser,—except, perhaps, another scout to whose observant eyes a wisp of grass may hold a meaning, and who sees where others see not.
Their camping paraphernalia reduced to a minimum, the Oakwood troop crowded into the Swan, a borrowed dory accommodating the overflow, and crossed the lake at Port Henry, landing at Chimney Point. From here they could look across the narrow channel formed by the Crown Point peninsula, and see the ruins of the famous old fortress on the end of the clumsy thumb of land. The sight of it fired Gordon with enthusiasm.
“Oh, it’s going to be great!” he cried. “Can we get down opposite Ticonderoga to-night, Red Deer?”
“If you’re good,” said Mac.
At Chimney Point they returned the Swan to its rightful owner, who agreed to row the borrowed dory across to its owner, and then they started southward along the Vermont shore.