A depressed silence greeted the announcement. Then Tim remarked, ‘Well, I’d a heap rather stay here than go ashore!’ ‘Oh, I guess nothing would hurt us,’ said Pud with assumed cheerfulness. ‘I ain’ goin’ ashore,’ declared Harmon emphatically. ‘No, sir, I ain’! There’s hants and ghos’es ’roun’ here, Mister Pud.’ ‘Oh, shucks, Harmon! You shut up about your ghosts. I’ve told you there isn’t any such thing as a ghost, haven’t I?’ ‘Yes, you done tol’ me all right, Mister Pud, but you ain’ never seen――’ ‘That’ll do for you!’ said Pud sternly. ‘Gee, as if we didn’t have enough trouble without you always raking up your old ghosts and haunts!’ Silence followed. The rain lessened, became a mist once more, almost ceased. The lake lightened perceptibly. Pud looked at his watch. It was now twenty-five after four. ‘Let’s eat some crackers,’ he suggested. ‘Then we’ll try her again.’ The crackers were all right, but they produced a thirst, and there was nothing drinkable aboard save condensed milk. Tim absolutely refused to drink the lake water at first, but, after Pud and Harmon had both pronounced it warm but sweet, he yielded and quenched his thirst, predicting, though, that it would probably give him typhoid fever and result in his untimely death. To which gloomy prophecy Pud replied that, as they had all drank it, they would probably die together. Cheered and invigorated by the modest repast, they returned to another prolonged argument with the engine, an argument that proved entirely one-sided and left them about where they had started. At intervals it misted, and steadily the desolate scene about them grew dimmer and more mysterious as evening approached. Harmon, when not taking his turn at the fly-wheel or performing one of a half-hundred commands made by Pud and Tim, spent his time staring apprehensively at the nearer shore, where, as the darkness crept stealthily forth from the thick woods, the mist that hung along the margin made for his willing imagination weird shapes and shadows. At last they acknowledged defeat, and, rather than drift to the shore during the night, Pud tossed over the anchor. The splash of it awoke a dozen echoes from the shores. Out and out went the light line, the boys staring in astonishment. Then, with a jerk, it stopped because there was no more of it, and still it descended straight from the bow. ‘Gee,’ muttered Pud, ‘there’s thirty-six feet of it, and that anchor hasn’t touched!’ ‘I told you there wasn’t any bottom!’ exclaimed Tim, drawing uneasily away from the edge of the launch. ‘Pshaw, thirty-six feet isn’t so deep for a lake,’ muttered Pud. ‘It isn’t? I’d like to know where there’s a lake up our way that’s more than twenty!’ ‘Well, what of it? This isn’t up our way. I guess there are lakes out West and up in British Columbia and――and Alaska that are hundreds of feet deep! Well, anyway, there’s no use leaving it out, I guess. Might as well pull it up again, eh?’