His tone showed traces of anxiety, and Paul, too, felt alarm.  The Miamis, after all, might defy their own superstition and land on the island.  Presently another canoe appeared behind the first, and then a third and a fourth, until there was a little fleet, which the two watched with silent apprehension.  Had Henry Ware been mistaken?  Did the Miamis really believe it was a haunted island?

On came the canoes in a straight black file, enough to contain more than a score of warriors, and the man and the boy nervously fingered their rifles.  If the Indians landed on the island, the result was sure.  The two might make a good fight and slay some of their foes, but in any event they would certainly be taken or killed.  Their lives depended upon the effect of a superstition.

The line of canoes lay like a great black arrow across the water.  They were so close together that to the watchers they seemed to blend and become continuous, and this arrow was headed straight toward the island.  Paul’s heart went down with a thump, but a moment later a light leaped into his eyes.

“The line is turning!” he exclaimed.  “Look, Jim, look!  They are afraid of the island!”

“Yes,” said Jim Hart, “I see!  The ghosts are real, an’ it’s pow’ful lucky fur us that they are.  The Miamis dassent land!”

It was true.  The black arrow suddenly shifted to the right, and the line of canoes drew into the open water, midway between the island and the eastern mainland.

“Lay close, Paul, lay close!” said Jim Hart.  “We mustn’t let ’em catch a glimpse uv us, an’ they’re always pow’ful keen-eyed.”

Both the man and the boy lay flat on their stomachs on the ground, and peered from the shelter of the bushes.  No human eye out on the lake could have seen them there.  The canoes were now abreast of the island, but were going more slowly, and both could see that the occupants were looking curiously at their little wooded domain.  But they kept at a healthy distance.

“I think they’re lookin’ here because the place is haunted, and not because we are on it,” said Jim Hart.

It seemed that he spoke the truth, as the Miamis presently swung nearer to the mainland and began to examine the shores long and critically.

“I guess they’ve been huntin’ us all through the woods, an’ think now we may be hid somewhar at the edge uv the lake,” said Jim Hart.

It seemed so.  The two lay there for hours, watching the little fleet of canoes as it circled the lake, keeping near the outer rim, and searching among all the hills and hollows that bordered the shores.  Once, when it was on the western side, the fleet turned its head again toward the island, and again apprehension arose in the hearts of the boy and the man, but it was only for a fleeting moment.  The line of canoes was quickly turned away, and bore on down the open water.  Paul and Jim Hart were protected by Manitou.