“Hond mold! Keep courage!” thought Nanking.  “It is only some kind of play or game.  How can I get a stork from them unless I play with them?”

But the Indians still sung their doleful tune and did not laugh a bit.  The month was December, and the fire, at first grateful, grew unreasonably warm.  At last Nanking trod on a hot coal, which burnt his old shoe through, and raised a blister on his heel.

“Such a game as this I never learned in Amsterdam or New Amstel,” thought Nanking, laughing good-naturedly; “I guess I will cut it short by riding one of their boys pig-a-back.”

So he picked out a young Indian with his roving eye, one perhaps sixteen years old, and, darting upon him, lifted the Indian boy up in powerful arms and carried him around the fiery circle.  The young brave struggled in vain.  Nanking clinched his big fingers around the Indian and dandled him like a baby.  The effect upon the Indians in the circle was exciting; they seized their spears, stopped their singing, and rushed upon their guest with apparent or assumed fury.

“Ha! herfe!” cried Nanking, “I have changed the monotony of this game, anyhow!”

At this moment an old Indian woman, the mother of the boy whom Nanking had desired to amuse, threw herself between the upraised spears and the laughing widow’s son.  She shouted something very earnestly, and then stretched herself at Nanking’s feet.  All the other Indians also flung themselves down in fear or revulsion of feeling, and some crawled in another minute to where the burning coals were strewn over the sward, and with their fingers or with tree-boughs returned these coals to the fire, while others quenched the fire itself with water from the torrent.  Nanking had never lost his temper.  He put the young Indian down and kissed him, and shook hands with one after another, who only rose as he approached them with a kind countenance.  They unbound his hands and overwhelmed him with attentions and professions, and placed their fingers on their foreheads significantly, still looking at him.

“Well,” exclaimed Nanking, “I hope they also don’t take me for a big idiot!  No, they do not.  It is only a part of the queer game.”

It was now growing late in the day, and Nanking wanted some food.  The Susquehannocks produced nuts, venison, fish, hominy, and succotash.  Their formerly savage countenances beamed confidence and consideration.  Nanking expressed his wishes by signs.  He wanted a great, long-legged, long-winged bird, a stork, to carry back alive to New Amstel.  The Indian chiefs conferred, and finally replied, by signs and assurances, that they had such a bird, but that it would take two whole days to procure one.

“Very well,” thought Nanking, “I may as well stay here until I get it, and not return home like a fool.  My mother will trust in God, if not in Saint Nicholas, and I trust in both.  Elsje will not forget me at any time!”