Throwing himself flat upon the ice, and drawing the cape of his coat over his head as I have described, Roy thrust the small end of the box into the water and buried his face in the other. There was a deep hole somewhere along that bank in which muscalonge were known to congregate, and Roy wanted to see if he had hit it. He looked at the bottom for about five seconds, and then threw back the cape, jerked the water-scope out of the hole, raised himself upon his knees, and sent up a yell that was so loud and unearthly that it brought Joe and Arthur around the point in great haste. They probably thought that Roy had been attacked by some wild animal, for they held their guns in their hands and were pushing the cartridges into them.
“Whoop-la!” shouted Roy. “I’ve struck it rich. Joe, I’ve found your canoe. Don’t believe it, do you? Well, look through that box and tell me what you see.”
Joe complied without saying a word, and one look was quite enough to excite him too. Then Arthur took a peep and said:
“Yes, sir; that’s the canoe, and there’s a rifle lashed fast to one of the thwarts. That’s my blanket—the red one with a blue stripe on the end. Now what’s to be done?”
“There’s something in that blanket, boys,” said Joe, after he had taken a second look, “and it is also tied to the canoe. How came those things at the bottom of the river, and where’s Matt Coyle?”
“We can talk about it while we go back to camp and bring another chisel, and an ax to enlarge the hole so that we can get the canoe out, and a rope to haul him up with,” said Arthur. “The sooner we get to work the sooner we may be able to settle some things. I think that with three of our largest and strongest fish-hooks fastened into him we can pull him up so that we can get hold of him.”
The others thought so too, and lost no time in putting the matter to a test. By their united efforts the hole was quickly enlarged to four times its original size, the ice was baled out, and in a few minutes more the campers were angling for a bigger prize than they thought. Not only three, but half a dozen hooks, two in the hands of each boy, were fastened somewhere, either in the sides of the canvas canoe or in the thick blankets that were tied to it, and by careful handling the whole was brought so near the surface of the water that Roy seized it and held it fast. Then with a “pull all together” and a “heave-yo!” the canvas canoe and its valuable cargo, which for four long, dreary months had lain at the bottom of the river, were hauled upon the ice.