“So would I,” said Jim Hart heartily.  “I’m a pow’ful good cook ez you know, Sol, bein’ ez you’ve et in your time more’n a hundred thousand pounds uv my victuals, an’ I’d like to cook him all the buffaler an’ deer steak he could eat between here an’ New Or-lee-yuns, no matter how long he wuz on the way.”

“An’ me,” said Tom Ross simply, wishing to add his mite, “I’d like to be on hand when any Injun tried to hurt him.  That Injun would think he’d been struck by seven different kinds uv lightnin’, all at the same time.”

The fire was built on a hillock that rose above the flood.  It had been kindled with the greatest difficulty, even by such experienced woodsmen as the five, but, once well started, it consumed the damp brush and spluttered and blazed merrily.  Gradually a great bed of coals formed and threw out a temperate, grateful heat.  All were glad enough, after the storm and the cold and the wet, to sit around it and to feel the glow upon their faces.  It warmed the blood.

The hill formed an island in the flood and “The Galleon” and the canoe were tied to trees only thirty or forty feet away.  Far to the west extended the great sweep of the river and around them the flooded forest was still dripping with the night’s rain.

“I think I’m willin’ to rest a while,” said Shif’less Sol.  “That wuz a pow’ful lively time we had last night, but thar wuz enough o’ it an’ I’d like to lay by to-day, now that our friend’s canoe hez been fixed.”

Father Montigny glanced up in surprise.

“My canoe repaired!” he said.  “I don’t understand.”

“’Twas only a little job fur fellers like us,” said the shiftless one.  “She’s all done, an’ your canoe, ez good ez new, is tied up thar alongside o’ our ‘Gall-yun.’”

“You are very good to me,” said the priest raising his hands slightly in the manner of benediction, “and I suggest, since we have a comfortable place here, that we remain on this little island until to-morrow.  Do you know what day it is?”

“No,” replied Paul, “to tell you the truth, Father Montigny, we’ve been through so much and we’ve had to think so hard of other things that we’ve lost count of the days.  I’d scarcely know how to guess at it.”

“It’s the Holy Sabbath,” said Father Montigny.  “You, I have no doubt, belong to a church other than mine, but the wilderness teaches us that we’re merely traveling by different roads to the same place.  We six are alone upon this little spot of ground in a great river flowing through a vast desolation.  Surely we can be comrades, too, and give thanks together for the mercy that is taking us through such great dangers and hardships.”

“We’re like Noah and his family after the ark landed,” whispered Shif’less Sol to Henry, in a tone that was far from irreverence.  But Paul said aloud: 

“I’m sure that we’re all in agreement upon that point, Father Montigny.  We do not have to hasten and we’ll remain here on the island in a manner proper to the day.”