CHAPTER V.
WITH ROD AND REEL

A great flash of fire burst from the double muzzle of the gun, and a crashing report woke the echoes of the woods and went reverberating across the bosom of the lake. Although staggered a bit by the recoil of the weapon, Sleuth seemed to see the white head of the figure at which he had fired fly off into space and go sailing away, visible for a moment against the sky ere it disappeared.

Needless to say, the sound of the shot brought the sleeping campers off their bed of boughs uttering exclamations of astonishment, alarm and interrogation.

“Wha-wha-what’s the mum-matter?” spluttered Springer.

“Great thutter!” gasped Crane. “Sleuth’s shot at somethin’.”

“What was it, Piper?” asked Stone.

“Yes, what did you fire at?” demanded Grant, reaching the agitated boy and grasping his shoulder.

“Oh, it was the most horrible thing you ever saw,” palpitated Piper. “It was right out there under a tree, a big black creature with a face as white as a sheet and fiery eyes as large as saucers. It had a frightful voice that made my blood run cold as ice.”

“Oh, come, Sleuth, what are you talking about?” remonstrated Rodney. “You’ve been dreaming.”

“Not on your life!” retorted the still trembling lad. “Haven’t even closed my eyes. I couldn’t. I heard all sorts of creatures prowling around in the woods, and something wailing like a lost soul out there on the lake in the direction of Spirit Island. You fellows snoozed like a lot of dead ones,” he continued resentfully. “You’d let Old Nick himself get you before you’d wake up. I never saw such a bunch of mummys.”

Crane’s fingers were not quite steady as he struck a match and lighted the lantern.

“Think yeou hit the critter, Sleuthy?” he asked.

“Hit it! You bet I did! Why, I just blew its old white head right off its shoulders. I saw that head go sailing through the air, too. You’ll find out I hit it when you look around.”

“I reckon,” said Grant, “we’d better investigate. Come on with the lantern, Sile. Where did you say the thing was, Piper?”

“Right out there,” answered Sleuth – “right out under that tree near the fireplace. Hadn’t I better load the gun again before we go out?”

“Here, gug-give me that,” snapped Springer, snatching the piece from Piper’s hands. “You’ll be shooting the top of somebody’s head off yet. Now let’s see what he fuf-fired at.”

Directed by Sleuth, who timorously held back and permitted the others to precede him, they went forth to investigate, Crane leading with the lantern.

“Here ’tis,” said Sile, holding up the light with one hand and pointing with the other. “I’ll bet a dollar that’s what Sleuthy fired at; and, so help me Bob, it’s his sleepin’ bag hangin’ over that limb!”

Springer, his agitated nerves suddenly relaxing, uttered a shout of laughter, in which the others joined, with the exception of Piper himself, who immediately began protesting that he had not fired at the dangling sleeping bag.

“That’s not the thing,” he rasped furiously. “I tell you what I shot at had a white head with big fiery eyes. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Let’s see if he hit the bag,” suggested Grant. “That will tell.”

It did tell, for the light of the lantern showed them a ragged hole torn through the very center of the sleeping bag by the two charges of shot, and once more Sleuth’s companions gave vent to unbridled merriment.

“Oh, this is the fuf-funniest thing yet,” howled Springer, clinging to his sides. “Old Sleuthy shot his own sus-sleeping bag. And it had a white face with fiery eyes as big as saucers, and he blew the head of the thing right off and saw it go sus-sailing through the air! Oh, dear! oh, dear! I’ll lose my breath!”

In sullen gloom Piper stood staring at the riddled sleeping bag. “I don’t care what you say,” he snarled; “it did have a white face with blazing eyes. Laugh, you mutts – laugh your heads off!”

“I won’t get over this for a week!” choked Crane.

Even Stone was convulsed, and Rodney Grant was compelled to lean against the tree for support.

“It had a terrible voice – don’t forget the voice,” said Ben.

“And he heard something wailing like a lost soul out toward Spirit Island,” put in Rod.

“Yes, I did; yes, I did!” rasped Piper repeatedly. “There – there it is now! Hear it yourselves! Now what do you think? Now what have you got to say?”

Out of the distance came a repetition of the cry which had contributed so much to the wakeful boy’s alarm.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” came again from Springer, as he rubbed his sides with both hands. “It’s a loon – nothing but a loon. They always holler lul-like that.”

“A loon!” muttered Sleuth, crestfallen. “It is? Well, anyhow, I know what I saw, and I’ll stick to it about the white face and the fiery eyes.”

Crane had placed the lantern on the ground almost beneath the dangling sleeping bag, and now Grant stooped and picked up something revealed by the light.

“Here’s a white feather,” he said. “A stray shot from Sleuth’s gun may have knocked it out of some sort of a bird. That’s it, I reckon; he saw a white owl that had lighted on the very branch this bag hangs from. That accounts for the big fiery eyes and the terrible voice.”

Piper was struck dumb; he tried to say something, but the words choked in his throat and he abandoned the effort. Mercilessly his companions joshed him, and he realized that his exploits on this first night in camp were destined to provide a topic for raillery for some time to come. With his head down, he turned and plunged into the tent. They found him wrapped in the blankets and stretched on the ground, and to their continued badinage he would utter no word of retort.

With the first gray streaks of morning showing in the eastern sky, Springer attempted to arouse Piper and get him up.

“Come on, Sleuth,” he said. “You want to fish, and this is the time to get at it.”

“Go on,” was the smothered retort. “I’m going to get some sleep. Fish all you want to; I don’t care.”

Grant was up in a moment. “I’m with you, Phil,” he said. “Let’s take a plunge and a rub-down to wake us up, then we can try the fishing, and leave the others to start the fire and have things ready for breakfast when we get back.”

Flinging off everything, they raced out to the rocky side of the point, and Sleuth heard them go plunging into the water, one after the other. With a shivering sigh, for the damp coldness of the earth had crept up through the ground-cloth and blankets and seemed to pierce his bones, Piper got upon his hands and knees, crawled to the bed of boughs just deserted, pulled the blankets of the others around him and again courted slumber. Hazily he heard the early risers return, rub down with coarse towels and get into their clothes. They were putting their rods and reels together when he drifted off for the first time into sound and peaceful sleep.

Rod and Phil made their way slowly along the lake shore toward the south, casting the flies as they went, at which feat Springer, having had more experience, was by far the most skilful.

“It’s the back-snap that does it, Rod,” he explained. “Don’t swing your whole arm so hard; use your wrist more. If you can get a good sharp back-snap and time the forward movement of your hand properly, you’ll catch on pup-pretty soon. You don’t want to cast out as hard as you bring the line back, for if you do you’ll snap the fly like a crack of a whip, and you may even snap it off. Watch me now.”

Rodney watched and saw his companion send the fly soaring far out on the water with a double movement of the wrist, sharp and then gentle, and scarcely any movement whatever of the shoulder.

“It sure looks right simple,” confessed the Texan. “I can do it fairly well with a short bit of line, but I get plenty balled up when I try to let it out and make a longer cast.”

Phil reeled in and gave a demonstration of the proper manner to whip a line out by repeated casts, drawing off more and more from the reel with the left hand and holding the slack until the proper moment to let it run. Indeed, as Grant had said, it seemed an extremely simple thing to do, and Rodney, being an apt pupil, soon began to get the knack of it, and was not discouraged, although he repeatedly made a failure right on the heels of a very praiseworthy effort.

“You’re getting it all right,” encouraged Springer. “You’re doing sus-splendidly.”

“There I go into a bush,” said Rod, as his fly caught in some shrubbery at a distance behind him.

“Never mind that. You’ll need pup-plenty of room at first, and you’ll keep forgetting every little while to make your back cast good and sharp and your forward cast easy. The two movements must be tut-timed just right, too.”

“It must be right good sport when there are fish to catch, but we don’t seem to get any bites.”

“There are fuf-fish enough in the lake,” declared Phil. “Wait till we find them. It’s only the real true fisherman who has plenty of pup-patience and perseverance; the ordinary fellow gets tired and quits after a short time. He seems to think he ought to find fuf-fish anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps the flies we have on are not right, and we’ll try some others as we mum-move along.”

In the east the pearly gray light was taking on the tint of pink coral, and gradually this deepened, until it displayed the tone of a red-cheeked apple dangling from an orchard branch in autumn. Presently the white cross marking the cliff called “Lovers’ Leap” at the further side of the lake gleamed out golden bright, like the spire of a church. The morning air was clear and sweet with the faint odors of the woods, and it seemed to effect the boys like wine, filling their bodies with vibrating energy and tingling enthusiasm.

Although Springer paused to change his flies as they moved along, trying in turn a “Morning Glory,” “Parmacheenee Belle,” “Silver Doctor” and “Brown Hackle,” it was not until he cast into the shadow of some overhanging bushes at the mouth of a brook that he had a strike. There, almost as soon as the hackle sailed out and dropped lightly upon the smooth surface of the water, there was a swirl, a snap at the line, a sharp bending of the delicate bamboo rod; and the clear, buzzing whirr of the multiple reel told that the fish was hooked and running with the fly.