“There are two men in it, as the strokes of the paddles show.  They are coming toward us.  Some evil spirit must have whispered to them that we are here.  Ah, they have stopped!  What does it mean, Dagaeoga?  Listen!  Did you not hear a little splash?  They think to surprise us!  They keep the paddles silent and try a new trick!  Hold the canoe here, Dagaeoga, and I will meet the warrior who comes!”

The Onondaga dropped his rifle, hunting shirt and belt with his pistol in it, into the bottom of the canoe, and then, his knife in his teeth, he was over the side so quickly that Robert did not have time to protest.  In an instant he was gone in the fog, and the youth in the canoe could do nothing but wait, a prey to the most terrible apprehensions.

Robert, with an occasional motion of the paddle, held the canoe steady on the water, and tried to pierce the fog with his eyes.  He knew that he must stay just where he was, or Tayoga, when he came back, might never find him.  If he came back!  If—­He listened with all his ears for some sound, however slight, that might tell him what was happening.

Out of the fog came a faint splash, and then a sigh that was almost a groan.  Young Lennox shuddered, and the hair on his head stood up a little.  He knew that sound was made by a soul passing, but whose soul?  Once more he realized to the full that his lot was cast in wild and perilous places.

A swimming face appeared in the fog, close to the canoe, and then his heart fell from his throat to its usual place.  Tayoga climbed lightly into the canoe, no easy feat in such a situation, put on his belt and replaced the knife in the sheath.  Robert asked him nothing, he had no need to do so.  The sigh that was almost a groan had told the full tale.

“Now we will bear to the right again, Dagaeoga,” said Tayoga, calmly, as the water dripped from him.  Robert shivered once more.  His fertile fancy reproduced that brief, fierce struggle in the water, but he said nothing, promptly following the suggestion of Tayoga, and sending the canoe to the right.  The position was too perilous, though, for them to continue on one course long, and at the end of forty or fifty yards they stopped, both listening intently.

“Some of them are talking with one another now,” whispered Tayoga.  “The warrior who swam does not come back to his canoe, and they wonder why he stays in the water so long.  Soon they will know that he is never coming out of the water.  Now I hear a voice raised somewhat above the others.  It is a French voice.  It is not that of St. Luc, because he must remain on shore to direct his army.  It is not that of De Courcelles, because you wounded him, and he must be lying in camp nursing his hurts.  So I conclude that it is Jumonville, who is next in rank and who therefore would be likely to command on this important service.  I am sure it is Jumonville, and his raised voice indicates that he is giving orders.  He realizes that the swimmer will not return and that we must be near.  Perhaps he knows or guesses that the messengers are you and I, because he has learned long since that we are fitted for just such service, and that we have done such deeds.  For instance, our journey to Quebec, on which we first met him.”