“But it’s still far in the west,” persisted Tayoga, as the three bent over their paddles.

The forest, however, was groaning with the wind, and little waves rose on the river.  Now the lightning flared again and again, so fierce and bright that Robert, despite his control of himself, instinctively recoiled from it as from the stroke of a saber.

“Do you recall any shelter farther on, Tayoga?” asked the hunter.

“The overhanging bank and the big hollow in the stone,” replied the Onondaga.  “On the left!  Don’t you remember?”

“Now I do, Tayoga, but I didn’t know it was near.  Do you think we can make it before that sky over our heads splits wide open?”

“It will be a race,” replied the young Iroquois, “but we three are strong, and we are skilled in the use of the paddle.”

“Then we’ll bend to it,” said Willet.  And they did.  The canoe shot forward at amazing speed over the surface of the river, inky save when the lightning flashed upon it.  Robert paddled as he had never paddled before, his muscles straining and the perspiration standing out on his face.  He was thoroughly inured to forest life, but he knew that even the scouts and Indians fled for shelter from the great wilderness hurricanes.

There was every evidence that the storm would be of uncommon violence.  The moan of the wind rose to a shriek and they heard the crash of breaking boughs and falling trees in the forest.  The river, whipped continually by the gusts, was broken with waves upon which the canoe rocked with such force that the three, expert though they were, were compelled to use all their skill, every moment, to keep it from being overturned.  If it had not been for the rapid and vivid strokes of lightning under which the waters turned blood red their vessel would have crashed more than once upon the rocks, leaving them to swim for life.

“That incessant flare makes me shiver,” said Robert.  “It seems every time that I’m going to be struck by it, but I’m glad it comes, because without it we’d never see our way on the river.”

“Manitou sends the good and evil together,” said Tayoga gravely.

“Anyhow,” said Willet, “I hope we’ll get to our shelter before the rain comes.  Look out for that rock on the right, Robert!”

Young Lennox, with a swift and powerful motion of the paddle, shot the canoe back toward the center of the river, and then the three tried to hold it there as they sped on.

“Three or four hundred yards more,” said Tayoga, “and we can draw into the smooth water we wish.”

“And not a minute too soon,” said Willet.  “It seems to me I can hear the rain coming now in a deluge, and the waves on the river make me think of some I’ve seen on one of the big lakes.  Listen to that, will you!”

A huge tree, blown down, fell directly across the stream, not more than twenty yards behind them.  But the fierce and swollen waters tearing at it in torrents would soon bear it away on the current.