The sun was declining in the west, but his crimson rays gave warmth to the picture, and the still air had, as it were, a foretaste of the balmy revivifying warmth of spring. In the woods, close at hand, were heard the harsh cawing of the crow, the shrill scream of the blue-jay, and the garrulous chatter of many a little family of warm-furred, pine-cone-eating little red squirrels.
Neither was animal life wanting elsewhere to complete the picture. On the ice could be counted, in different directions, no less than seventeen flocks of Canada geese, some of them apparently on the watch, but the major part lying down, and evidently sleeping after their long and wearisome migration. In a single diminutive water-hole below the cliff, which probably marked the issue of one of the many subterranean springs of the islet, a half-dozen tiny ouac-a-wees, or Moniac ducks, swam and dove in conscious security.
"I can't see any open water yet," said Creamer, "although it looks to me a little like a water-belt, alongshore, inside Point Prime."
"There's no more water-belt there," said Lund, "than there was music in your great-uncle's jewsharp; but there's a spot off to the sou'-west that looks to me a little like blue water."
"Blue water, indeed!" retorted Creamer; "who ever saw blue water on soundings! I'll lay a plug of navy tobacco there isn't open water enough there away to float La Salle's gunning-float comfortably."
"Well, Hughie," slowly replied the practiced pilot, who was really little disposed to vaunt his knowledge of coast and weather, "the tide will soon decide whether you or I, or both of us, are right. It is just full flood now, and the ice is pressed in so against the land, that I know there can be no openings along the Point, and but very small ones where I think it looks like one. It seems to me that a water-vapor is rising out there, by yonder high pinnacle just in range of the pool below the ice-foot; but the tide will soon let us know if there are any large leads open within a dozen miles."
"There's a sign in your favor," cried La Salle, pointing in the direction of the supposed 'lead.' "There's a flock of Brent geese, and they can't live away from open water. See, Ben, they are heading right in for the East Bar, and if we were only there we might depend upon a shot."