At the same time, from a distant ridge upon the eastern shore, covered with evergreens which stood out like dark steeples against the evening sky, came a faint, dull noise, as if some belated woodsman was driving a blunt axe against a tree.  The sound itself would scarcely have awakened a hope of anything unusual in the minds of the inexperienced; but, combined with the guide’s aspect as he pocketed his pipe, it made Cyrus and his comrades sit suddenly erect, listening as if ears were the only organs they possessed.

The queer, dull noise was once repeated.  Then again there was silence almost absolute, Herb’s oars moving with the softest swish imaginable, as the boat skimmed along the lonely, curved bay which he had chosen for a calling-place.  It came to a stop amid shadows so dense and black that they seemed almost tangible, close to a bank fringed with overhanging bushes, having a background of evergreens.  These last, in the fast-gathering darkness, looked like a sable array of mourners in whose ranks a pale ghost or two mingled, the spectres being slim white-birch trees.

The opposite bank presented a similar scene.

It was amid such surroundings that Neal Farrar heard for the second time in his life the weird sound of the moose-hunter’s call.  He was a strong, well-balanced young fellow; yet here again he knew the sensation as if needles were pricking him all over, which he had felt once before in these wilds, while his heart seemed to be performing athletic sports in his body.

Cyrus and Dol confessed afterwards that they were “all shivers and goose-flesh” as the call rose upon the night air.

After he had shipped his oars, and laid them down, Herb Heal noiselessly turned his body to face the bow, and took up the birch-bark horn which lay beside him.  He breathed into it anxiously once or twice, then paused, drew in all the air which his big lungs could contain, put the trumpet again to his lips with its mouth pointing downward, and began his summons.

The first part of the call lasted half a minute, or so, without a break.  During its execution the hunter moved his neck and shoulders first to the left, then to the right, and slowly raised the horn above his head, the rolling, plaintive sounds with which he commenced gathering power and pitch with the ascending motion.  As the birch trumpet pointed straight upward, they seemed to sweep aloft in a surging crescendo, and boom among the tree-tops.

Carrying his head again to the left and right, Herb gradually lowered the horn until it was once more pointed towards the bottom of the boat, having in its movements described in the air a big figure of eight.  The call sank with it, and died away in a lonely, sighing, quavering grunt.

Two seconds’ pause, two slow, great throbs of the boys’ hearts, so loud that they threatened to burst the stillness.

Then the call began again, low and grumbling.  Again it rose, swelled, quavered, and sank, full of lonely longing.