"What is it?" asked Archer.
"I'll show you when we get there—come on."
The little Swiss toymaker stood watching them and laughing with a spasmodic laugh which he might have caught from his own wooden cuckoo. When they reached the other shore Tom fell at once to examining a very perceptible rift in the earth a few feet from the shore.
"Do you see?" he said, "we floated over on this piece of land. The tree where we hung our coats was on the real shore, and——"
"Go-od night, and it missed the boat," concluded Archer.
"This tree here is something like it," said Tom, "and that's where I made my mistake. I ought to have noticed the trees and I ought to have noticed the crack. Gee, if my scout patrol ever heard of that! 'Specially Roy Blakeley," he added, shaking his head dubiously.
It was indeed something of a "bull" in scouting, though perhaps a more experienced forester than Tom would have become as confused as he in the same circumstances. Perhaps if he had been as companionable with his school geography as Archer had been with his he might have known about the famous Lake Nonnenmattweiher in the silent depths of the Schwarzwald and of its world-famed floating island, which makes its nocturnal cruises from shore to shore, a silent, restless voyager on that black pine-embowered lake.
As the boys looked back across the water they could see the little Swiss toymaker still standing upon the shore, and looking at him through the rescued glass (of which they were soon to make better use), Tom could see that his odd little figure was shaking with merriment—as if he were wound up.