He found some logs near the cove; but the farther he went from it the scarcer they became, until finally he passed a mile or more of coast without seeing one.
"Strange!" muttered the young man. "What can have become of them? There are hundreds still missing, and they should be somewhere in this vicinity."
He was paddling almost without a sound, and skirting a ledge of black rocks that jutted well out into the lake, as he spoke. At that same moment something impelled him to glance upward and encounter a vision startling in its unexpectedness.
On the very face of the cliff, some twenty feet above the water, and leaning slightly forward, stood a girlish figure gazing directly at him with great, wondering eyes. For an instant she seemed to read his very soul. Then a vivid flush sprang to her cheeks, and with a quick movement she disappeared as though the solid rock had opened to receive her.
Peveril rubbed his eyes and looked again. She certainly was not there, nor could he discover the slightest indication of an opening through which she could have vanished. Yet, even as he looked, a pebble leaped, apparently from the unbroken face of the cliff, and dropped with a clatter to the ledge close beside him.
He paddled farther out into the lake, but still failed to discover any aperture. He moved for short distances both up and down the coast without any better success. To be sure, a stunted cedar growing out from the rocky face near where the girl had disappeared showed the existence of either a crevice or ledge, and she might have concealed herself behind it, though Peveril did not believe she had. Even if she were thus hidden, how had she gained that perilous position?--how would she escape from it?--who was she?--and where had she come from?
She was not one of the fisher-women from the cove; of that he was certain. Neither was she an Indian girl, for the face, indelibly pictured in his memory, was fair and refined. It had not struck him as being beautiful, except for the glorious eyes that had looked so fully into his.
He called several times: "Are you in trouble? Can I help you?" But only mocking echoes, and the harsh screams of a flock of gulls circling about the very place where he had seen her, came to him in answer. He sought for some means of scaling the cliff, but found none. Everywhere it was smooth and sheer. Never in his life had the young man been so baffled and never so loath to own himself beaten; but he was at length warned by the setting of the sun to give over his quest and row vigorously back the way he had come.