The boys had all crowded near to listen. It was now the social hour for
campers. By the camp-fire more reminiscences followed; and the two
guides chimed in it with moose stories, bear stories, panther stories,
wild tales of every imaginable and unimaginable kind of adventure, until
the lads thought no mythology which they had ever learned could rival in
marvels the forest lore.

At this opportune time, Neal suddenly thought of describing, or
attempting to describe, that strangest of strange calls which he had
heard, after the capsizing of the canoe, on the preceding night, when
Cyrus and he were jacking for deer on Squaw Pond.

Joe grunted expressively. "So help me! it was the moose call!" he
ejaculated. "What say, Doc?"

"I guess it was," answered Dr. Phil. "It was either the cow-moose
herself calling, or some hunter imitating her with his birch-bark
trumpet. It's a weird sort of experience, to hear that call for the
first time; I shouldn't wonder if your heart went whack-whack, lad?"

"I only hope he'll get a chance to hear it again before he goes back to
England," said Cyrus.

Forthwith, the Harvard man proceeded to explain that he was bent on
pressing forward for a distance of sixty miles or so, to the heart of
the wilderness, to search for moose, but that he intended to do the
journey in a leisurely, zigzag fashion, camping for a couple of nights
at various points, in order to do the honors of the forest to his
English comrades.