“No Amos yet?” asked Teddy, coming up from the canoes, where he had been doing something to fill in the cut made by the snag, under the impression that all such serious bruises weakened a canoe, and made it unreliable in case it was used in the rough water of rapids.
“Nothing doing,” replied Dolph. “Kind of expecting him any time, though. Come here, and see how you looked taking that header.”
“Hello! been developing a roll of films in your daylight tank, have you? And did they turn out good?” Teddy asked.
“Look for yourself; I’ve given them a hypo bath, and fixed them. Now they’re being washed. That one with the teetering canoe, and you taking a backward plunge, is just immense, aint it, Teddy?”
“Well, that proves one thing, anyhow,” the other declared, with a laugh, “I know now that I went over _backwards_. Couldn’t just decide before how I did it. And as sure as you live, there are the deer’s horns actually tilting the canoe.”
“You never got such a picture before in all your life, and I don’t believe you ever will again. It beats anything I ever saw. But I wish Amos would come in,” and Teddy frowned a trifle.
“Why, you’re not worried, are you?” Dolph asked.
“Hardly that, but I can’t help but think of those two shots, and wonder if they could have anything to do with his staying away.”
Dolph made no reply, although, he, too, looked a little uneasy.
When more than another hour had passed, Teddy again approached the subject that seemed on his mind.
“It’s sure queer we don’t hear anything from Amos,” he remarked.
“Three o’clock, and past. You don’t think now, it’s possible that Amos could have gone and got lost?” suggested Dolph.
“That boy?” he declared. “Why you couldn’t lose him anywhere in Northern Michigan. Take him in a balloon, and drop him down somewhere in the pitch dark, and I honestly believe all he’d have to do would be to smell the soil, feel of the trees, and tell right away where he was.”
“Makes me think of a story I heard once about an old Nantucket fisherman. He always claimed that he could tell by the smell of the mud on the anchor, where they were, whenever they had to haul up in a fog. So one day, just to fool old Captain Jones, his men, while they were anchored in a fog somewhere off shore, took a handful of soil out of a box they had on deck, where the skipper kept some parsley growing, of which he was very fond.”