THE VOYAGE.

After Limberleg had had a ride, the Twins took a turn, while their mother watched them from the shore.

“It’s almost more fun than our logs,” said Firetop, when he took his first ride.

They played with the boat and tried all sorts of experiments with it, and were so happy and excited that it grew dark and the moon came out before one of them so much as thought of anything to eat.

For days and days after that, Hawk-Eye worked on his boat. He found out all its tricks. He even found out that he could go in deep water if he paddled. He found it out first by using his hands for oars. Then he chopped out a clumsy flat paddle.

All this took him some time, but by midsummer he had become quite expert with his clumsy craft. He could keep it right side up and make it go where he wanted it to at any rate.

Sometimes he ventured out into the deep water around the gulls’ rocks. One day he even rowed all round them. He could look down into the water and see shoals of fish swimming about, but he could not catch them.

When he went back to the cave that day, he said to Limberleg: “I have an idea. Why can’t you weave a kind of net out of leather thongs? I can fasten it in the water out by the rocks and catch fish in it. The water gods may like us very much, as you say, but they haven’t been throwing any fish up on land for us since the earthquake, so I’m going to try to catch some.”

“To be sure,” said Limberleg. “We snare rabbits, why shouldn’t we snare fish?”

They had made hooks out of bone and had caught river fish sometimes when they lived back in the forest, but they had not brought any hooks with them on their journey. They had always been more used to hunting game than to fishing, anyway. Now with a sea full of fish right at hand, waiting to be caught, they began to think more about it.

“If we could catch fish, we should have more food right at hand than we could possibly eat, without ever hunting at all, if we didn’t want to,” said Hawk-Eye.

After that Limberleg spent days and days tying leather thongs together in a coarse net, while Hawk-Eye made bone fish-hooks for himself and Limberleg and the Twins, and fastened them to long fine strings of leather.

By August, Hawk-Eye had taught the Twins how to fish the streams for trout, and he himself had learned how to fasten his net between two of the gull rocks and catch the fish that swam in deep water.

There was nothing Hawk-Eye liked so much as going out in his boat. He went up and down the coast for miles, and it was not long before he knew every little creek and inlet and bay on the eastern end of the island.

At last, one day in August, he said to Limberleg: “I am going to load the boat with food to last a few days and see if I can’t get over to the mainland. It is only a short distance across to the nearest point. I’ve been farther than that in my boat already.”

“But I am afraid you’ll be drowned,” cried Limberleg, “and then what shall we do?”

“You can take care of yourselves,” said Hawk-Eye. “The children can already fish in the streams, and there are the rabbits and the clams. You will not want for anything while I am away.”

“But we shall be lonesome,” cried Limberleg; “and suppose you should never come back!”

“But I shall come back,” said Hawk-Eye. “You’ll see.”

Limberleg knew it was useless to say any more, and the very next day she and the Twins helped him load his boat with deer-meat and wild plums and acorns, and then Hawk-Eye put in his spear and his stone axe and hooks and line, and got in himself.

The three of them stood on the beach and watched him push off from their island and start across the channel toward the main land. They watched him until the boat was a mere black speck in the distance. Then they trudged slowly back to their lonely cave.

There followed many anxious days and nights. Limberleg went back to hunting again. She took the Twins with her, and began to teach them to hunt like men.

“If anything should happen to me, you could take care of yourselves if you knew how to hunt and trap as well as fish,” she said.

Beside getting food for their daily needs, they began to store it for the winter. They gathered nuts by the bushel and piled them in heaps in the corner of the cave. Whenever they were not sleeping or doing anything else, they were always gathering wood for the fire.

In this way four long weeks went by. At last came a day when the wind was sharp, and it seemed as if summer were nearly over.

Limberleg and the Twins had gone down to the cave behind their bluff to get clams for supper. They had one of Limberleg’s baskets with them, and had nearly filled it with clams. They were out some distance from the beach-line, for the tide was low.

Suddenly the water began to rise. The returning tide came in such a flood that they had to run as fast as their legs could carry them to get safely ashore. They had reached the bank and were just beginning to climb slowly up the bluff, when they heard a shout behind them. Limberleg was so startled that her knees gave way under her and she sat right down in the basket of clams!

They looked across the cove, and there, coming in with the tide, was their own boat, with brave Hawk-Eye in it waving his hand to them. They could see three other heads beside Hawk-Eye’s, but neither Limberleg nor the Twins could tell whose heads they were. They left the basket of clams on the side of the bluff and tore down to the water’s edge.

As the boat came near the shore, they saw Grannie, looking scared to death, sitting in the bottom of the boat, and holding on to each side with all her might. Behind her were Blackbird and Squaretoes!

The moment the boat came near shore, the two boys tumbled out of the back end of it, nearly upsetting Grannie, and splashed through the shallow water to the shore. They butted Firetop in the stomach and knocked him flat, and spun Firefly around in the sand to show how glad they were to see them.

When at last the prow of the boat grated on the sand, and Grannie and Hawk-Eye got out, the four children ran round them in circles like puppies, screaming with joy. Even Limberleg danced. Grannie clapped her hands over her ears.

When the noise had calmed down a little, she seized Firetop and Firefly and shook them soundly.

“You little red-headed wretches,” she cried. “Here you are alive and well, and fat as rabbits, and all this time I’ve worried the heart nearly out of me wondering what had become of you!”

It had been such a long time since the spring morning when the Twins had stolen away out of the cave that at first they did not know what Grannie was talking about. They had never thought how she must have felt when she found that they were gone.

Hawk-Eye laughed. “I’ve brought Grannie back with me on purpose to give you what you deserve,” he said. “She told me she was going to take a stick to you as soon as she saw you, for playing such a trick on her.”

“Just you wait until I get a stick,” cried Grannie. She looked fierce as she said it, but the Twins knew very well she was just as glad to see them as they were to see her. They seized her hands, one on each side, and began to pull her up the hill. Blackbird and Squaretoes pushed from behind.

“Go along with you,” screamed Grannie, holding back with all her might. “I can’t run so fast; I am all out of breath.”

“We’ll run you, then,” screamed the children, and they pulled and pushed until they got her panting and breathless to the top of the hill. Hawk-Eye had drawn his precious boat high up on the beach out of reach of the tide, and he and Limberleg followed more slowly with the basket of clams.

At the top of the hill, the Twins, with Blackbird and Squaretoes, ducked into the hidden path that led to the cave, just like mice diving down a mouse-hole.

Grannie was left standing alone on the hill-top. She couldn’t see what had become of the children. She could hear their voices, and down the bluff she could see a thin column of smoke rising. She knew the cave must be there, but she didn’t know how to get to it.

When Hawk-Eye and Limberleg came up, they took her with them through the little green alley that led to the cave. When they reached it the children had flung a great pile of dry sticks on the fire, and the flames were leaping high in the air to welcome them.

“See,” cried Limberleg, “even the fire dances with joy at your coming.”

She took Grannie into the cave and showed her the piles of warm skins, and the heaps of nuts: then she showed Grannie how to cook clams.

The Twins had taken Blackbird and Squaretoes the very first thing to see the rabbits. Then they came back for Grannie and made her go and see them too, and when every one had seen everything there was to see, it was dark, and Limberleg had a real feast ready for them to eat.

She had killed a deer the day before, and so they had broiled venison, seasoned with sea salt. They had clams steamed with seaweed, and they had nuts and wild plums.

When they had all stuffed themselves full, Limberleg said to Hawk-Eye: “Now tell us all about your journey. When you went away, we watched you from the hill-top until you were a mere speck on the water. We knew nothing more of you until we heard your shout to-day. There were many weary days between.”

“They were not weary to me,” said Hawk-Eye. “I reached the other shore in safety, and then turned my boat toward the sunset. I kept in the shallow water near the shore, and followed the coast around the end of the point of land which we crossed when we came here.

“I knew our river must empty into the big water not far away, and so I paddled up the first stream I found. I slept in the boat at night. The first night I was awakened by the howling of wolves. But I had only to push my boat out into the stream. They would not follow me there.

“For two days I paddled up-stream. The second day I began to see things that I knew, and on the morning of the third I reached the river path just as Grannie was coming down for water.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Grannie. “I thought I was dreaming! The boat frightened me. I thought Hawk-Eye was dead and that I saw his spirit. I started to run to the cave.”

“Did you think we were all dead?” asked Limberleg.

“Yes,” said Grannie. “I thought some cave bear or tiger had got you. You were always so bold and venturesome. And as for these worthless ones,” she added, patting Firetop on the head, “I didn’t know whether they had gone with you, or had stolen away into the woods and been eaten by old Sabre-tooth.”

“Well, you see,” cried Limberleg, laughing, “it pays to be bold and brave.” When she said “bold and brave,” she looked right at Hawk-Eye. She thought he was the boldest and bravest man in the world.

“There aren’t any sabre-toothed tigers on this island, and there’s plenty to eat every day. Didn’t the others want to come too when you told them about it?” she said to Hawk-Eye.

“They all wanted to come,” Hawk-Eye answered, “but the boat would not hold so many. So I stayed to show them how to make boats for themselves. Long Arm and Big Ear and Grey Wolf are all at work on them now, and they will come in the spring or summer if they get them done.”

“How will they know the way?” asked Firetop.

“I told them just how to follow the river and the coast, and where to cross,” said Hawk-Eye. “They can’t help finding the island, and if they find the island, they can’t help finding us. I told them we were on the side where the sun rises out of the water.”

It had grown very dark as they talked. There was only firelight in the cave, but just then Limberleg saw a bright streak on the edge of the water toward the east.

“Look, Grannie, look,” she cried, pointing to it. “We have discovered the secret of the sun and the moon! They both sleep in the water!”

The children and Grannie and Hawk-Eye and Limberleg all watched together until the white streak grew brighter and stretched in a silver path across the water to the beach below. They saw the pale disk of the moon slowly rise into the deep blue of the night sky, and the stars wink down at them.

“I suppose no one else in the whole world knows the secret,” said Limberleg solemnly. “You see this is the end of the world. You can’t go any farther.”

“Except in my boat,” said Hawk-Eye.

“The spirits of the water have been good to us,” said Limberleg. “We will not tempt them too far. If there are more secrets, we will not try to find them out.”

“Some day,” said Hawk-Eye, “someday I mean to go,” but Limberleg would not let him finish.

“No,” she said, putting her hand over his mouth, “no, you are not going any where at all, ever again! You are going to stay right here with us and be happy.”