“You must be right, and we’re swimming slowly, too, to avoid any splashing of the water that would alarm St. Luc’s sentinels.  At what point do you think we’ll approach the island, Tayoga?”

“From the north, because if they are expecting us at all they will look for us from the west.  See, Daganoweda already leads in the curve toward the north.”

“It’s so, Tayoga.  I can barely make out his figure, but he has certainly changed our course.  I don’t know whether it’s my fancy or not, but I seem to feel a change, too, in the quality of the air about us.  A stream of new and stronger air is striking upon the right side of my face, that is, the side toward the south.”

“It is reality and not your fancy, Dagaeoga.  A wind has begun to blow out of the south and west.  But it does not blow away the vapors.  It merely sends the columns and waves of mist upon one another, fusing them together and then separating them again.  It is the work of Areskoui.  Though there is now a world between us and him he still watches over us and speeds us on to a great deed.  So, Dagaeoga, the miracle of the sky is continued into the night, and for us.  Areskoui will clothe us in a mighty blanket of mist and water and fire.”

The Onondaga’s face was again the rapt face of a seer, and his words were heavy with import like those of a prophet of old.

“Listen!” he said.  “It is Areskoui himself who speaks!”

Robert shivered, but it was not from the cold of the water.  It was because a mighty belief that Tayoga spoke the truth had entered his soul, and what the Onondaga believed he, too, believed with an equal faith.

“I hear,” he replied.

A low sound, deep and full of menace, came out of the south, and rumbled over Andiatarocte and all the mountains about it.  It was the voice of thunder, but Tayoga and Robert felt that its menace was not for them.

“One of the sudden storms of the lake comes,” said the Onondaga.  “The mists will be driven away now, but the clouds in their place will be yet darker, Areskoui still holds his shrouding blanket before us.”

“But the lightning which will come soon, Tayoga, and which you meant, when you spoke of fire, will not that unveil us to the sentinels of St. Luc?”

“No, because only our heads are above the water and at a little distance they are blended with it.  Yet the same flashes of fire will disclose to us their fleet and show us our way to it.  Andiatarocte has already felt the wind in the south and is beginning to heave and surge.”

Robert felt the lake lift him up on a wave and then drop him down into a hollow, but he was an expert swimmer, and he easily kept his head on the surface.  The thunder rumbled again.  There was no crash, it was more like a deep groan coming up out of the far south.  The waters of Andiatarocte lifted themselves anew, and wave after wave pursued one another northward.  A wind began to blow, straight and strong, but heavy floating clouds came in its train, and the darkness grew so intense that Robert could not see the face of Tayoga beside him.