We made a difficult landing on the mainland, on the oozy shore of mixed sawdust and mud, and followed the old trail to the old camping ground under the rocks, a place full of pleasant memories for the elder two of our trio, and offering to the boy the charms of freshness and discovery. For him the cliff towered skyward but little below the eagle's flight; its tiny caves were unexplored mysteries, their coral-beaded curtains of Canada yew and delicate netting of mountain-fringe strange foreign growths. Through his undimmed eyes I had glimpses of those happy shores whereon the sun always shines and no cloud arises beyond. What a little way behind they seem in the voyage that has grown wearisome, and yet we can never revisit them for a day nor for an hour, and it is like a dream that we ever dwelt there. Bearing with us from this port something not marketable nor even visible, yet worth carrying home, we reëmbarked, and the wind, blowing in my face, informed me we were homeward bound. One after another, we passed five boats of fishing parties tied up at as many stakes, the crews pursuing their pastime with steadfast patience, as their intent silence proclaimed. To me they were as ships passed in the night. I had no other knowledge of them than this, except that my friend told me there was a fat woman in each boat, and that one of them boasted to us, with motherly pride, of a big pickerel caught by her little girl. A blended hum of bumblebees droned in among us, and my companions remarked that one of the aerial voyagers had boarded our craft, while I maintained there were two, which proved to be the fact; whereupon I argued that my ears were better than their eyes, but failed to convince them or even myself. I welcomed the bees as old acquaintances, who, in the duck-shooting of past years, always used to come aboard and bear us company for awhile, rarely alighting, but tacking from stem to stern on a cruise of inspection, till at last, satisfied or disappointed, they went booming out of sight and hearing over marshfuls of blue spikes of pickerel weed and white trinities of arrowhead. I cannot imagine why bees should be attracted to the barrenness of a boat, unless by a curiosity to explore such strange floating islands, though their dry wood promises neither leaf nor bloom. I hear of people every year who forsake leafage and bloom to search the frozen desolation of the polar north for the Lord knows what, and I cease to wonder at the bees, when men so waste the summers that are given them to enjoy if they will but bide in them.