We were awake in the morning before the sun and in our skiff out on the pond casting with great care our most alluring flies. We whipped every square inch of that pond. We spent two hours and a half on it, used every fly in the book, and never got a rise. We never even saw a trout big or little. We could have seen them had they been there. It was not more than three feet to the bottom in the deepest part, and we could see the bottom and everything, animate and inanimate, in the water. The shoals of trout we had seen and heard – some of which we had eaten – the night before, had disappeared utterly and completely. Bige said "They have gone back into the ice-chest."
The conviction finally forced itself through our dense intellectual domes that the trout in Lost Pond gave attention to business only at night. This was a night fish pond. We should have to wait until night for another bite.
Slowly and sadly we poled back to camp. The sight that met us on landing, to employ a stock literary expression, "would have made the stoutest heart quail." It would surely be stating it mildly to say that we were amazed.
The pack-basket which contained our provisions we had left standing just inside the tent flap. It had been dragged out and was now lying on its side several feet from the tent, while remnants of its contents were scattered over the forest carpet in every direction. A bag of flour, intended for flapjacks, had been ripped open and the flour thoroughly mixed with leaves and dirt, ditto the sugar and coffee. Butter was nicely spread over a ground area about six feet square, while a half-eaten loaf of bread was floating in the water. Potatoes and onions had been chewed up and "the chawins" spat out on the ground. To add a touch of the artistic to the picture of destruction, the yolks of a dozen eggs gave a dab of yellow to the southeast corner. Porcupine quills were sticking in the splints of the basket and were liberally sprinkled over the ground, while disturbance in the leaves marked the path where the slab of bacon had been dragged away.
We followed the bacon trail several rods back into the woods to the foot of a small birch tree, where there remained some scraps of bacon rind. Calmly sitting on a limb of this tree, about thirty feet up, we saw the two burglarious villains licking the bacon grease off of their paws and faces while emitting occasional grunts of pleasure and satisfaction.
We threw sticks and stones at the porcupines and made several hits, knocking out some quills, but could not bring them down; so I climbed another tree to about their level and shot them – with a camera. Their picture now adorns the rogues' gallery, where it is "held up to the scorn and contempt" of all campers, and especially as a warning to all "tenderfeet."
Returning to camp, we looked carefully over the wreckage for something fit to eat. We found "the makings" of one pot of coffee left in the torn bag, two unbroken eggs, and a pint bottle of maple syrup.
Bige filled the coffeepot, hung it on a spring pole which rested across a log with the rear end sticking in the ground, laid the two eggs on the log where the spring pole crossed it, and started a fire, while I went for an armful of dry firewood. Returning, I clumsily stumbled over the ground end of the spring pole, upset the coffee in the fire and knocked the eggs off the log. For a moment I watched the contents of those two eggshells trickle down through the leaves and moss, then I looked up at Bige.
I am sure he had profanity in his heart; I saw it in his eye. What Bige really said was "Sufferin' bald-headed Mike!"
We sat on the log several minutes before any attempt at conversation was made; then Bige said, "Le's go home." The next remark logically was, "Which way?"
It would have been difficult and impracticable to return the way we had come. We knew that, generally speaking, home lay in a southwesterly direction from where we sat, but we were uncertain whether Lost Pond was on the northern or the southern side of the high points in the Seward group of mountains.
However, one of the first principles of woodcraft which I learned while still in the primary class is that "water always runs downhill," and that if one follows a brook down far enough it will surely lead to a larger stream, and it in turn will finally take one to a lake. It may be a long and circuitous route, but when one has lost his bearings in the forest, that is generally a safe rule to follow. Also in a lumbered country, where water is the only means of transportation for logs, all log-roads run downhill and ultimately lead to river or lake. We felt reasonably certain, therefore, that if we followed down Roaring Brook and should cross a log-road at any point, it would be quite safe to leave the brook and continue down the log-road. Moreover, at this place the brook was flowing south and its waters must ultimately reach Long Lake or its outlet.