But not the white youth and the red youth alone bore witness to the great change, the phenomenon even, that Areskoui was creating.  Both Rogers and Willet had looked curiously at the sun, and then had looked again.  Daganoweda, awaking, stood up and gazed in the intent and reverential manner that Tayoga had shown.  The soul of the Mohawk chieftain was fierce.  He existed for the chase and war, and had no love beyond them.  There was nothing spiritual in his nature, but none the less he was imbued with the religion of his race, and believed that the whole world, the air, the forests, the mountains, and the lakes were peopled with spirits, good or bad.  Now he saw one of the greatest of them all, Areskoui, the Sun God himself, in action and working a miracle.

The untamable soul of Daganoweda was filled with wonder and admiration.  Not spiritual, he was nevertheless imaginative to a high degree.  Through the silver veil which softened the light of the sun more and more, permitting his eyes to remain fixed upon it, he saw a mighty figure in the very center of that vast globe of light, a figure that grew and grew until he knew it was Areskoui, the Sun God himself.

A shiver swept over the powerful frame of Daganoweda.  The Mohawk chieftain, whose nerves never quivered before the enemy, felt as a little child in the presence of the mighty Sun God.  But his confidence returned.  Although the figure of Areskoui continued to grow, his face became benevolent.  He looked down from his hundred million miles in the void, beheld the tiny figure of Daganoweda standing upon the earth, and smiled.  Daganoweda knew that it was so, because he saw the smile with his own eyes, and, however perilous the venture might be, he knew then it could not fail, because Areskoui himself had smiled upon it.

The great veil of mist deepened and thickened and was drawn slowly across all the heavens.  Robert felt a strange thrill of awe.  It was, in very truth, to him a phenomenon, more than an eclipse, not a mere passage of the moon before the sun for which science gave a natural account, but a sudden combination of light and air that had in it a tinge of the supernatural.

All the Mohawks were awake now, everybody was awake and everybody watched the sun, but perhaps it was Daganoweda who saw most.  No tincture of the white man’s religion had ever entered his mind to question any of his Iroquois beliefs.  There was Areskoui, in the very center of the sun, mighty and shining beyond belief, and still smiling across his hundred million miles at the earth upon which Daganoweda stood.  But, all the while he was drawing his silver robe, fold on fold, thicker and tighter about himself, and his figure grew dim.