"Joe, your smuggling friends must have taken them."
"It is a human devil of some kind, then, and he must have carried them still farther up the coast, for we should have seen them if they had been carried the other way."
"Give way, men! I'm going to find those logs if they are anywhere on Keweenaw Point."
So the light skiff shot ahead, with the two Bohemians rowing, and the others in bow and stern, watching the coast sharply as they slipped past its rocky front. They were already beyond any point at which Peveril had previously discovered logs, and were rapidly approaching the place of his mystery. He could see the jutting ledge, and was eagerly scanning the cliffs above it, when suddenly Joe held up his hand with a warning "Hist!"
Without a word Peveril gave the signal to stop rowing, which was instantly obeyed. In the silence that followed they heard a sound of singing. It was a plaintive melody, sung in a girlish voice, untrained, but full and sweet. To his amazement Peveril recognized it as one of the very latest songs of a popular composer, whose music he had supposed almost unknown in America. The voice also seemed to be close at hand.
At first the men gazed about them with an idle curiosity, but, not seeing anyone, they began to grow uneasy, and to cast frightened glances on every side.
"By gar!" exclaimed Joe Pintaud, and on the instant the singing ceased.
The sudden silence was almost as disquieting as the voice of an invisible singer, and again Joe uttered his favorite exclamation.
"Dunno, Mist Pearl. One tam I t'ink from rock, one tam from water. Fust he come from ze hair, zen he gat under ze bateau. Bimeby he come every somewhere. One tam I t'ink angele, me; one tam dev. Mostly I t'ink dev."
"It seemed to me to come from the cliff," said Peveril.
"Though I could also have sworn that it rose from the water."
By this time Peveril had again got his craft under way, and they were skirting a wooded islet that lay off the coast just beyond the black ledge. This island appeared to be nearly cut in two by a narrow bay; but as those in the boat seemed to see every part of this, and were convinced that it contained no logs, they did not enter it.
The young leader was not giving much thought to either logs or his immediate surroundings just then, for his ears were still filled with the music that had come to him as mysteriously as had the vision of a few days earlier.
