“You will pay both, Tayoga, and with interest,” said the hunter with conviction.  “But you were right when you assumed that we could not go away and leave Grosvenor a prisoner in their hands.  Because we’re here, and because you saw him, your Manitou has laid upon us the duty of saving him.”

Robert’s face glowed in the dusk.

“We’re bound to see it that way,” he said.  “We’d be disgraced forever with ourselves, if we went away and left him.  Now, how are we to do it?”

“I don’t know how yet,” replied the Onondaga, “but we must first go down to the water.  We’ve forgotten our thirst in the news I bring, but it will soon be on us again, fiercer and more burning than ever.  And we must have all our strength for the great task before us.”

“I think it’s better for all three of us to go down to the lake at once,” said Willet.  “If anything happens we’ll be together, and we are stronger against danger, united than separated.  I’ll lead the way.”

It was a long and slow descent, every step taken with minute care, and as they approached the lake Robert found that his thirst was up and leaping.

“I feel that I could drink the whole lake dry,” he said.

“Do not do that, Dagaeoga,” said Tayoga in his precise way.  “Lake George is too beautiful to be lost.”

“We might swim across it,” said Willet, looking at the silvery surface of the water unbroken by the dark line of any canoe.  “A way has opened to us here, but we can’t follow it now.”

Robert knelt at the margin, and took a little drink first, letting the cool water moisten his mouth and throat before he swallowed it.  How grateful it was!  How wonderfully refreshing!  One must almost perish with thirst before he knew the enormous value of water.  And when it was found, one must know how to drink it right.  He took a second and somewhat larger drink.  Then, waiting a while, he drank freely and as much as he wanted.  Strength, courage, optimism flowed back into his veins.  As they came down the cliff he had not seen any way to rescue Grosvenor, nor did he see it now, but he knew that they would do it.  His restored body and mind would not admit the possibility of failure.

They remained nearly an hour in the shadow of the bushes at the water’s edge, and then began the slow and painful ascent to the niche, which they reached without mishap.  Another half hour there, and, having examined well their arms, they climbed to the cliff’s rim, where they looked over, and Robert obtained his first view of the Indian camp.

The feasting was over, the fires had sunk far down, and most of the warriors were asleep, but Tandakora himself sat with his arms across his chest, glowering into the coals, and a line of sentinels was set.  A red gleam from his uniform showed where Grosvenor, leaning against a log, had fallen at last into a happy slumber, in which his desperate case was forgotten for the time.