at he did not know. There were some
things calculated to spring up from time to time, which, as leader of
the Wolf Patrol, he did not claim to know. This was one of them.

Fainter grew the rumble of voices belonging to the unseen sailors; and
the click-clack of oars working in the rowlocks also began to die away.

Francois had listened with the rest. Being only an ignorant voyageur,
with very little knowledge save along his chosen lines, of course the
French Canadian was apt to have more or less superstition in his system.
It was a heritage he had imbibed with his mother's milk.

Francois had heard more or less about this weird, disappearing fleet of
vessels that, for some time now, had been acting so mysteriously along
the coast of the big bay. Like most of his class, he believed that they
were unreal, and possibly but the ghosts of brave vessels that in years
gone by may have ploughed the green waters of Hudson Bay.

Although he said little or nothing on the subject, Francois did
considerable thinking along those lines. He cast frequent uneasy looks
away out through the mist, as though fearful lest he suddenly come face
to face with some terrible mystery.

To him those voices were anything but natural. Possibly, he even
pictured some ghostly figures sitting in a phantom boat, and speeding
over the surface of the historical sheet of water, about which so much
that is remarkable has been written, and, also, handed down from father
to son, among the rangers and caribou hunters of the Canadian bush.

It had died away completely by now. To the scouts, this simply signified
that the men in the boat had probably drawn so far away from the shore
that their voices no longer carried across the water as before; but to
Francois it meant that the phantoms had chosen to withdraw, it might be
sinking beneath the surface of the bay.

After this little adventure the boys fell to thinking again about the
stories they had heard about the fleet that seemed to continually hover
along the shore of Hudson Bay, now appearing, and then vanishing in the
most remarkable manner.

Just because Ned did not seem fit to announce that they would come to a
halt and endeavor to get in communication with the vessel, to which the
men in the rowboat undoubtedly belonged, Teddy and Jimmy jumped to the
conclusion that he, too, must be uneasy about the character of that
ship.

The truth of the matter was that Ned had begun to notice certain signs
g