Page:Young Hunters of the Lake.djvu/201

Rh "Let us take the course Whopper thinks is right," said Snap. "We can't be so very far wrong anyway."

Anxious to get back to camp and get some rest, they pulled with vigor. They kept this up for fully ten minutes and then the forward boat slid up on a bar of sand, followed quickly by the second boat and the canoe.

"Here, this won't do!" cried Shep.

"Are we near shore?" questioned Whopper. "I can't see any land."

Neither could the others, and all were more or less worried. They had struck the sand bar with such force that they had been carried well up on it. When they tried to shove the boats off they found the task too much for them. The canoe, however, came away with little difficulty.

"Shep, you paddle around and see if you can locate the shore," suggested Snap, and the doctor's son sent the canoe first in one direction and then another. He was not afraid to go out of sight, since he could easily hear their voices in the stillness of the night.

"I don't see any shore," he announced, after a search of a quarter of an hour. "We must be stuck somewhere in the middle of the lake."