uggest. "I can't imagine
any living soul being away up in this country without some kind of a
boat so as to get around. Now which way would he be likely to go, do you
think, Ned?"

"If what Jack heard, and you didn't, was the sound of a working paddle,"
Ned told him, "I should say that the party went up the river. If moving
with the current, you understand, there would be no need to swing his
paddle at all, but simply let his boat float along till past our camp."

Francois, who had been listening to all this talk while cooking
breakfast, nodded his head approvingly.

"Zat it so, sare," he ventured to observe. "Eef you ask me I haf to say
ze same t'ing. Mebbe it was canoe, mebbe it was some seal zat come all
ze way up zis rifer from zat big ocean zey call Hudson Bay, and which
zey tell me ees six hundred mile from one shore to ze other."

"A real genuine seal, does he mean, Ned?" exclaimed Jimmy; "now I would
like to set eyes on one of the glossy little chaps like those I've fed
in the museum down at the Battery in little old New York."

"Made enough noise to have been a hippopotamus, if only such
warm-blooded Nile amphibious animals lived in these Arctic rivers," Jack
declared; "but after all it doesn't matter, only if the spy went up the
stream we're better be off, because that would show his crowd would be
found there, and not below."

"And I suppose that after this, while we sail on through cataracts, and
along the smoother stretches we've got to keep our eyes peeled for signs
of an ambuscade," Teddy observed. "Well, luckily we've got some pretty
sharp-eyed fellows along with us; and then there are the experienced
guides. Who cares for expenses? As long as I can poke into unknown
sections where few white men have ever set foot, and Frank can write
stunning letters to his paper about the strange things we run across, it
doesn't matter a cookey. We'll get to our destination, and we're bound
to find out all we came to see, because the scouts always do succeed."

It was in this same confident spirit that the little party embarked
shortly afterwards. Not one of them felt faint-hearted as the unknown
future loomed up before them. Nevertheless, could they have known just
then of the astonishing experiences through which they were shortly
fated to pass, possibly their pulses must have quickened under the
strain.

The sun was well above the far-eastern horizon when they entered the
three canoes, having carefully load