"If I know anything about it, this weather won't last," said one of the soldiers, after a careful survey of the sky.
"It looks like a storm to me, too," said Dave. "But it may blow around before it reaches here."
Yet the day passed without the storm coming, and that night the occupants of the batteaux slept soundly on the shore of a tiny bay opening up from the lake. At sunrise the army was again in motion and once again the flotilla continued its journey westward.
Several soldiers who had been taken sick on the march to Oswego had been left behind, but now others were overcome by the heat and the glare of the sun on the water, and one batteau had to be turned into a floating hospital. At one time Dave himself felt dizzy, but he said nothing, for he well knew that Lieutenant Naster would have no mercy on him, sick or well.
The sun had come up over the water like a great ball of fire and by nine o'clock the day promised to prove more than usually hot. But an hour later the clouds began to show up in the west and it became rapidly cooler.
"We're in for that storm now," said a soldier to Dave. "See how the wind is rising."
"Yes, and we are pretty far out from land now,
