og close by he began to cut a
number of resinous splinters. When he had collected a large handful of
them, he went down to the canoe, and tried to fix them in the ring in
the bow of the craft.

"What in the world are you doing?" asked Fred, who had got up to see
what Peter was about.

Peter hammered the bundle of splinters home. "If we don't get meat in
twelve hours we won't be able to travel fast--can't keep up steam," he
said. "There's only one way to shoot game at night, and that's--"

"Jack light," said Horace, who recognized the device. "It's a regular
pot-hunter's trick, but pot-hunters we are, and no mistake about that.
I only hope it works."

CHAPTER XIV

Here where deer were plentiful and hunters scarce, Mac's jack light
should prove effective. Sportsmen and the law have quite properly
united in condemning killing deer by jack light; but the boys felt that
their need of food justified their course.

After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch sapling about eight feet
long, and trimmed off the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, he
fitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, close to the bow; then
he hung the blanket by its corners upon the projecting tips of the
sapling, and thus screened the bow from the rest of the canoe.

As it had already become dark, and the shores were now black with the
indistinct shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set the canoe gently
into the water. When it was afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters,
which crackled and flared up like a torch.

"You'd make a better game poacher than I, Horace," he said. "You take
the rifle, and I'll paddle."

Horace accordingly placed himself just behind the blanket screen, with
the weapon on his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, who did not
want to be left behind, seated himself amidships.

"Keep a sharp lookout, both of you," Mac said. "Watch for the light on
their eyes, like two balls of fire."

The canoe, keeping about thirty yards from shore, glided silently down
the long lake. The "fat" pine flamed smoky and red, and it cast long,
wavering reflections on the water. Once an animal, probably a muskrat,
startled them by diving noisily. A duck, sleeping on the water, rose
with a frantic splutter and flurry of wings. Then, fifty yards
farther, there was a sudden splash near the shore, then a crashing in
the bushes, and a dying thump-thump in the distance.

Horace swung his rifle round, but he was too late