It was easy to follow--straight to the pool, and from the pool twenty paces down-stream, where a little finger of sand and pebbles had been formed by the eddies.

In this bar was fresh imprint of the canoe, and here the footprints ended.
Peter whimpered, peering into the tunnel of darkness between forest trees, where the water rippled and gurgled softly on its way into a deeper and more tangled wilderness.

He waded belly-deep into the current, half determined to swim; and then he waited, listening intently, but could hear no sound of voice or paddle stroke.
Yet he knew Jolly Roger and Nada could not be far away.
He returned to the edge of the pool, and began sniffing his way down-stream, pausing every two or three minutes to listen.

Now and then he caught the presence of those he sought, in the air, but those intervals in which he stopped to catch sound of voice or paddle lost him time, so the canoe was traveling faster than Peter.
Half way between himself and the bow of that canoe McKay could dimly make out Nada's pale face in the star glow that filtered like a mist through the tops of the close-hanging trees.
Scarcely above his breath he laughed in joyous confidence.
"At last my dream is coming true, Nada," he whispered.

"You are mine.
And we are going into another world.