Accordingly, as noiselessly as possible they approached the shore, and, gliding in between the overhanging trees, laid the canoe alongside a clump of bushes.  Then, without a word being spoken, they laid in their paddles and stretched themselves full length in the canoe.

James was glad of the rest, for, trained and hard as were his muscles, he was exhausted by the long strain of the row for life.  He guessed that Nat would calculate that the Indian canoes would scatter, when they lost sight of them, and that they would seek for them more closely on the eastern shore.  At the same time he was surprised that, after once getting out of sight of their pursuers, Nat had not immediately landed on the opposite shore, and started on foot through the woods.

After recovering his breath, James sat up and listened attentively.  Once or twice he thought he heard the sound of a dip of a paddle, out on the lake, but he could not be sure of it; while from time to time he heard the croak of a frog, sometimes near, sometimes at a distance along the shore.  He would have thought little of this, had not a slight pressure of Jonathan’s hand, against his foot, told him that these were Indian signals.

Some hours passed before Nat made a move, then he touched Jonathan, and sat up in the canoe.  The signal was passed on to James, the paddles were noiselessly taken up, and, without a sound that could be detected by the most closely-listening ear, the canoe stole out again on to the lake.  Until some distance from shore they paddled very quietly, then gradually the strokes grew more vigorous, until the canoe was flying along at full speed up the lake, her course being laid so as to cross very gradually towards the eastern side.

It was not until, as James judged, they must have been several miles from the point at which they had started, that they approached the eastern shore.  They did so with the same precautions which had been adopted on the other side, and sat, listening intently, before they gave the last few strokes which took them to the shore.  Quietly they stepped out, and the two scouts, lifting the canoe on their shoulders, carried it some fifty yards into the forest, and laid it down among some bushes.  Then they proceeded on their way, Nat walking first, James following him so close that he was able to touch him, for, in the thick darkness under the trees, he could not perceive even the outlines of his figure.  Jonathan followed close behind.  Their progress was slow, for even the trained woodsmen could, with difficulty, make their way through the trees, and Nat’s only index, as to the direction to be taken, lay in the feel of the bark of the trunks.

After an hour’s progress, he whispered: 

“We will stop here till daylight.  We can’t do any good at the work.  We haven’t made half a mile since we started.”

It was a positive relief, to James, to hear the scout’s voice, for not a single word had been spoken since they lost sight of their pursuers in the darkness.  The fact that he had ventured now to speak showed that he believed that they were comparatively safe.