the day and to bring back a fresh store of firewood. Firewood was getting difficult to find on the island and there was plenty of it along the high-water mark on the shores of the lake, and in calm weather they could put in anywhere to pick it up.
They rowed south from the island down the lake, where they had been last night in the dark. It looked very different in daylight. A great wood ran up the hillside on the eastern shore of the lake. Far up it they could see smoke curling slowly above the trees, a thin trickle of smoke climbing straight up. There, they knew, must be the savages they had seen in the night prancing in the smoke and beating down the flames. Today in the bright sunlight no flames were to be seen. There was the little trickle of smoke climbing into a tiny cloud above the trees. There was a faraway noise of wood-chopping. But that was all.
They found a good place to beach the Swallow , ran her nose ashore, pulled her well up and made her painter fast to a young oak tree growing near the water’s edge.
“We won’t take the kettle or the knapsack with us,” said Mate Susan. “It’s always better to make a fire on the shore than among the trees. We’ll make a fire here when we come back, and we’ll have dinner before getting the firewood, so that we shan’t have to think about getting at the kettle and things while we are loading the ship.”
“Oughtn’t we to leave someone to keep guard?” asked Able-seaman Titty.
“You can stay if you want to,” said Captain John, “but when we are high up on the hill we shall be able to see right up the lake. If we see the Amazons coming we can get back here quicker than they could get here rowing.”
Titty, thinking of the savages she had come to see, hurriedly agreed that there was no need for a guard.