“Perhaps you’re right, lad.  We’ll enjoy our few minutes of safety while we can and the sight of those canoes scurrying around the lake, looking for their lost prey, will help along our merriment.”

“That’s true,” said Robert, “and I think I’ll take a glance at them now just to soothe my soul.”

They were about three quarters of the way up the cliff, and the three, turning at the same time, gazed down at a great height upon the vast expanse of Lake George.  The night had lightened again, a full moon coming out and hosts of stars sparkling in the heavens.  The surface of the lake gleamed in silver and they distinctly saw the canoes cruising about in their search for the three.  They also saw far in the south a part of the fleet returning, and Robert breathed a sigh of thankfulness that they had escaped at last from the water.

They turned back to the top, but the white lad felt a sudden faintness and had he not clung tightly to a stout young bush he would have gone crashing down the slope.  He quickly recovered himself and sought to hide his momentary weakness, but the hunter had noticed his stumbling step and gave him a keen, questing glance.  Then he too stopped.

“We’ve climbed enough,” he said.  “Robert, you’ve come to the end of your rope, for the present.  It’s a wonder your strength didn’t give out long ago, after all you’ve been through.”

“Oh, I can go on!  I’m not tired at all!” exclaimed the youth valiantly.

“The Great Bear tells the truth, Dagaeoga,” said the Onondaga, looking at him with sympathy, “and you cannot hide it from us.  We will seek a covert here.”

Robert knew that any further effort to conceal his sudden exhaustion would be in vain.  The collapse was too complete, but he had nothing to be ashamed of, as he had gone through far more than Willet and Tayoga, and he had reached the limit of human endurance.

“Well, yes, I am tired,” he admitted.  “But as we’re hanging on the side of a cliff about fifteen hundred feet above the water I don’t see any nice comfortable inn, with big white beds in it, waiting for us.”

“Stay where you are, Dagaeoga,” said the Onondaga.  “We will not try the summit to-night, but I may find some sort of an alcove in the cliff, a few feet of fairly level space, where we can rest.”

Robert sank down by the friendly bush, with his back against a great uplift of stone, while Willet stood on a narrow shelf, supporting himself against a young evergreen.  Tayoga disappeared silently upward.

The painful contraction in the chest of the lad grew easier, and black specks that had come before his eyes floated away.  He returned to a firm land of reality, but he knew that his strength was not yet sufficient to permit of their going on.  Tayoga came back in about ten minutes.

“I have found it,” he said in his precise school English.  “It is not much, but about three hundred feet from the top of the cliff is a slight hollow that will give support for our bodies.  There we may lie down and Dagaeoga can sleep his weariness away.”