They had gone but a little way, when a pull at the line signaled a bite. The fish did not make as hard a fight as the lake trout they had caught before, while fishing in the same manner, and when Jean pulled it over the side, he was disappointed to find that it was a siskiwit or lake salmon. Siskiwit are not very good eating for they are very fat and this was a small one weighing not over three pounds. Hungry as they were, they decided to try their luck again, in the hope of getting a better and larger fish, but after paddling for fifteen or twenty minutes and catching another larger siskiwit, they could wait no longer.
They put in to the rock beach very carefully, stepping out into the water before the bow grounded, to avoid scraping the new canoe. There on the rock Ronald and Etienne made a fire of moss, bark and birch wood, while Jean cleaned the fish. The boiled siskiwit was very fat and oily, but the three were so nearly starved that it seemed a feast to them. As they had not been accustomed to use salt with their food they did not miss that luxury. While the lads were preparing the meal, Etienne had discovered a well defined hare runway. The boys had to admit that a supply of food was a prime necessity, and they agreed to camp where they were until next day and make every attempt to secure game.
After Etienne had gone to set his snares, Ronald and Jean crossed the sloping rock beach, which was rough and scored. A little back from the water's edge it was covered more or less thickly, first with lichens, and then with moss, bearberry plants and creeping evergreens. Looking for signs of game, they pushed their way through spruce and birch woods, stopping several times to set snares where hares had made a runway or squirrels had left a little pile of cone scales, with the seeds neatly extracted, at the foot of a spruce. The two had been going through the woods for perhaps half a mile, when they came out suddenly on the shore of a body of water.
"A bay," exclaimed Jean, "who would have looked for one here?"
"It looks more like a lake," Ronald replied. "The water is brownish like the little streams we've seen, and there is no opening in sight."
Jean shook his head. "Just because we cannot see an opening is no sign that there is none," he said. "Shores that look continuous are not always so, as you well know. Unless we have reached the mainland, this must be a landlocked bay. It is surely too large for a lake within an island."