noon
Then the Captain walked coolly past them , and took his place in the canoe . For a long time , as they paddled up the lake , they could see the Onondagas moving about the beach , and could hear their angry voices . When at last the canoe slipped from the confines of river and hills and forest out upon the great Lake Ontario , where the green water stretched flat , east and north and west to the horizon , the Cayuga warriors said farewell and turned again to their own lands . It was at noon of a bright day . The water lay close to the white beach , with hardly a ripple to mar the long black scallops of weed and drift which the last storm had left on the sand . The sky was fair and the air sweet . In the one canoe which the Cayugas had left to them , the little party headed to the east , now skimming close to the silent beach , now cutting a straight path across some bay from point to point , out over the depths where lay the sturgeon and the pickerel and trout and whitefish .