“And you, Deerslayer!” exclaimed Judith, turning her handsome face from the loop, to bestow a gracious and grateful look on the young man; “do you ‘keep close’ and have a proper care that the savages do not catch a glimpse of you!  A bullet might be as fatal to you as to one of us, and the blow that you felt would be felt by all.”

“No fear of me, Judith—­no fear of me, my good gal.  Do not look this-a-way, although you look so pleasant and comely, but keep your eyes on the rock and the shore and the—­”

Deerslayer was interrupted by a slight exclamation from the girl, who, in obedience to his hurried gestures, as much as in obedience to his words, had immediately bent her looks again in the opposite direction.

“What is’t?—­what is’t, Judith?” he hastily demanded.  “Is any thing to be seen?”

“There is a man on the rock!—­an Indian warrior in his paint, and armed!”

“Where does he wear his hawk’s feather?” eagerly added Deerslayer, relaxing his hold of the line, in readiness to drift nearer to the place of rendezvous.  “Is it fast to the warlock, or does he carry it above the left ear?”

“’Tis as you say, above the left ear; he smiles, too, and mutters the word ‘Mohican.’”

“God be praised, ’tis the Sarpent at last!” exclaimed the young man, suffering the line to slip through his hands until, hearing a light bound in the other end of the craft, he instantly checked the rope and began to haul it in again under the assurance that his object was effected.

At that moment the door of the cabin was opened hastily, and a warrior darting through the little room stood at Deerslayer’s side, simply uttering the exclamation “Hugh!” At the next instant Judith and Hetty shrieked, and the air was filled with the yell of twenty savages, who came leaping through the branches down the bank, some actually falling headlong into the water in their haste.

“Pull, Deerslayer,” cried Judith, hastily barring the door, in order to prevent an inroad by the passage through which the Delaware had just entered; “pull for life and death—­the lake is full of savages wading after us!”

The young men—­for Chingachgook immediately came to his friend’s assistance—­needed no second bidding, but they applied themselves to their task in a way that showed how urgent they deemed the occasion.  The great difficulty was in suddenly overcoming the vis inertiae of so large a mass; for, once in motion, it was easy to cause the scow to skim the water with all the necessary speed.

“Pull, Deerslayer, for heaven’s sake!” cried Judith, again at the loop.  “These wretches rush into the water like hounds following their prey!  Ah!  The scow moves! and now the water deepens to the armpits of the foremost; still they rush forward and will seize the ark!”

A slight scream and then a joyous laugh followed from the girl; the first produced by a desperate effort of their pursuers, and the last by its failure, the scow, which had now got fairly in motion, gliding ahead into deep water with a velocity that set the designs of their enemies at naught.  As the two men were prevented by the position of the cabin from seeing what passed astern, they were compelled to inquire of the girls into the state of the chase.