The canoe went on with a gentle, rocking motion made by the current, strayed now and then a little way from the cliff, but always came back to it.  The pair of great red eyes stared at the cliff so close and at the other cliff farther away and at the middle of the stream, which was now tranquil and unruffled by the wreckage of the forest blown into the water by the storm.  The canoe also looked into one or two little coves, and seeing nothing there but the river edge bubbling against the stone, went on, came to a curve, rounded it in an easy, sauntering but skillful fashion, and entered a straight reach of the stream.

So far the canoe was having a lone and untroubled journey.  The river widening now and flowing between descending banks was wholly its own, but clinging to the habit it had formed when it started it still hung to the western bank.  The night grew more and more favorable to the undiscovered voyage it wished to make.  Masses of clouds gathered and hovered over that particular river, as if they had some especial object in doing so, and they made the night so dark that the red eyes of the canoe, great in size though they were, could see but a little way down the stream.  Yet it kept on boldly and there was a purpose in its course.  Often it seemed to be on the point of recklessly running against the rocky shore, but always it sheered off in time, and though its advance was apparently casual it was moving down the stream at a great rate.

The canoe had gone fully four hundred yards when an Abenaki warrior on the far side of the river caught a glimpse of a shadow moving in the shadow of the bank, and a sustained gaze soon showed to him that it was a canoe, and, in his opinion, a derelict, washed by the flood from some camp a long distance up the stream.  He watched it for a little while, and was then confirmed in his opinion by its motion as it floated lazily with the current.

The darkness was not too great to keep the Abenaki from seeing that it was a good canoe, a fine shell of Iroquois make, and canoes were valuable.  He had not been able to secure any scalp, which was a sad disappointment, and now Manitou had sent this stray craft to him as a consolation prize.  He was not one to decline the gifts of the gods, and he ran along the edge of the cliff until he came to a low point well ahead of the canoe.  Then he put his rifle on the ground, dropped lightly into the stream, and swam with swift sure strokes for the derelict.

As the warrior approached he saw that his opinion of the canoe was more than justified.  It had been made with uncommon skill and he admired its strong, graceful lines.  It was not often that such a valuable prize came to a man and asked to be taken.  He reached it and put one hand upon the side.  Then a heavy fist stretched entirely over the canoe and struck him such a mighty blow upon the jaw that he sank senseless, and when he revived two minutes later on a low bank where the current had cast him, he did not know what had happened to him.