Bob and Joe, coming to the surface, puffing and blowing water, were pleased to note the sympathy displayed for them in four boyish forms, rolling off the log and holding on to their sides with laughter. Nor did the keenness of this sympathy abate the whole evening long, for every now and then one of them might be heard to repeat the language of Dave Benson, as he glanced significantly at the others, “It’s just like a canoe—only it’s so different.” However, Bob and Joe, being duly scrubbed down and invested in a change of duck clothing from the locker of the _Spray_, did not relish any the less the supper that awaited them, of broiled live lobster, cooked over a glowing bed of coals on the beach, and corn that was as sweet as Dave Benson had promised. They took their chaffing as good fellows and comrades are bound to do, only vowing inwardly to bide their time for revenge. Then, as night was coming on, they set up their fly-tent on a clean, dry part of the beach, well beyond the reach of the tide, spread down their blankets, and Tom and Bob and Henry Burns turned in to sleep there, leaving the little cabin of the _Spray_ for the Warren boys. “Bob,” said Tom, “did you hear what Dave Benson said as he brought in the capsized dory, with the lobsters, too?” “He said it was ‘just like a canoe, only—’” “Oh, you dry up, Tom,” exclaimed Bob. “Your turn will come next, so don’t rub it in.” And they went off soundly to sleep. The next morning, when they awoke, they found that the wind had altered and was beginning to blow up from the southward. They must, therefore, beat their way down to the foot of the island, some ten miles distant, against a head wind and sea, for a southerly always rolled in more or less of a sea after it had blown for an hour or so. “Come again,” called out Dave Benson, as they left his cabin astern, and he stood waving them farewell with his weather-beaten hat. “I’d just like to know what he meant when he said he saw a canoe out here,” said Tom. “I know ours is all right, but he certainly did describe a canoe, when he spoke about its being paddled, and ours is the only one I know of around here.” “Yes, and he saw it last night, or, rather, yesterday afternoon,” said Bob, “and nobody would have disturbed ours in broad daylight, at any rate.” But about an hour later, they came suddenly to the conclusion that Dave Benson knew what he was talking about, when Henry Burns exclaimed all at once: “Why, there it is now. Dave Benson was right, after all. That’s a canoe, down about a mile ahead, just off that white line of beach, and there are two paddling it.” The boys looked in amazement. There could be no mistaking it. Henry Burns had surely spied a canoe. They could make it out quite plainly, pitching slightly in the sea, with apparently some one at either end. “Quick, get the glass, Joe,” cried George Warren, who had the tiller. “It’s in the locker in the cabin, you know. That will show us just who it is.”