"I know what sea water is," he thought. "I tried it once, out in New York Bay. This tastes salter than that did. Hullo! Those are porpoises, tumbling around out yonder. I've seen porpoises before, off Long Island, when I went bluefishing with Uncle Jack. I wish he were here to tell me what all this amounts to. He knows a heap."
Perfectly stupendous were those beetling promontories between which the boat sailed in. They must have been several hundreds of feet in height. Here and there, in the clefts and crevices of their rugged sides and along their summits, grew gigantic pines and fir-trees.
"I'll put away the book," he said, "in the locker under the back seat. I'm going ashore. I want to find somebody that can tell me what this means. I won't go home till I know all about it. This isn't any kind of cove, though. It runs away in."
So it did, narrow and deep, and it wound around a rock corner, shortly, so that all view of Green Lake behind him was cut off. It was almost cool in there, as well as shadowy, and Ned felt a kind of shudder going over him. He was not exactly afraid, but his heart was beating more quickly than usual. He had put away the folio with great care, and all of its four hundred and seventy-five splendid illustrations seemed to be running through his memory like a river in a flood-time, after a rousing rain-storm.
"There!" he exclaimed, at last. "There's a landing-place! I can see boats and men and women. Away off yonder, up the slope, houses enough for a village. Hullo! That's a ship at anchor."
Beyond the village, as far as his eyes could search, were more mountains, covered half-way up with forests, but right here before him the fiord widened so as to make a small cliff-guarded harbour of the safest kind. It was really a very beautiful place to visit, if Ned had been at all able, just then, to admire scenery.
"Who would have thought," he exclaimed, "that a fellow could get to such a thing as this is, just by crossing Green Lake!"