“While enjoying our after-dinner smoke we observed that the wind had shifted a point or two to the east, and was blowing up half a gale.
“‘Great Scott!’ exclaimed Frank. ‘If we don’t get away from here right off, we’re going to be storm-stayed! This wind will raise a sea presently that we won’t be able to face. Let’s leave right off! I’ll drag the boat down to the water, while you go after the rest of those fish.’
“‘No, no!’ said I. ‘We’ll just stay where we are for the present. Don’t you see that the waves are already breaking into the cove too heavy for us? If you were round on the other side of the point now, you’d see what the water is, and you’d be glad enough you’re out of it, I can tell you! We’re all right here, and we may as well fish till toward sundown; and if the wind has not eased off by that time, we’ll just have to snug the boat up here, and foot it over the hills to the schooner. It’s not more than five or six miles anyway.’
“Frank strolled across the point for a look at the sea, and came back in agreement with my views. Then we returned to the pool, and whipped it assiduously till after five o’clock, but without a repetition of the morning’s success.
“Meanwhile the wind got fiercer and fiercer, so we went back to the boat and made a hearty supper as preparation for the rough tramp that lay before us. We took our time, and smoked at leisure, and cached our prizes, and resolved not to start till moonrise. By this time the tide was well out, and the cove had become an expanse of shingly flats, threaded by the shallow current of the stream, and fringed along its seaward edge with a line of angry surf.
“By and by the moon got up out of the gulf, round and white, and bringing with her an extra blow. As the shore brightened up clearly, we set out, moving along the crest of the point. Frank was just saying, ‘How spectral those scarred gray hills look in this light! How suitable a place for the hobgoblins those old Frenchmen imagined to possess them!’ when, as if to point his remarks, there came a ghostly clamor, high and quavering, from a dark cleft far up the mountain-side.
“We both started; and I exclaimed, ‘The loons have overheard you, old fellow, and are trying to work on your nerves! They want revenge for the stuffed companions of their bygone days.’
“‘That’s not loons!’ said Frank very seriously. ‘It’s no more like loons than it’s like lions! Listen to that!’
“I listened, and was convinced.
“‘Then it must be those old Frenchmen’s friends,’ I suggested; ‘and I feel greatly inclined to avoid meeting them if possible.’