Carrigan had no very definite idea of the next step in his adventure.  He had swum from the bateau largely under impulse, with no preconceived scheme of action, urged chiefly by the hope that he would find St. Pierre in the cabin and that something might come of it.  As for knocking at the door and rousing the chief of the Boulains from sleep—­he had at the present moment no very good excuse for that.  No sooner had the thought and its objection come to him than a broad shaft of light shot with startling suddenness athwart the blackness of the raft, darkened in another instant by an obscuring shadow.  Swift as the light itself David’s eyes turned to the source of the unexpected illumination.  The door of St. Pierre’s cabin was wide open.  The interior was flooded with lampglow, and in the doorway stood St. Pierre himself.

The chief of the Boulains seemed to be measuring the weather possibilities of the night.  His subdued voice reached David, chuckling with satisfaction, as he spoke to some one who was behind him in the cabin.

“Pitch and brimstone, but it’s black!” he cried.  “You could carve it with a knife, and stand it on end, Amante.  But it’s going west.  In a few hours the stars will be out.”

He drew back into the cabin, and the door closed.  David held his breath in amazement, staring at the blackness where a moment before the light had been.  Who was it St. Pierre had called sweetheart?  Amante!  He could not have been mistaken.  The word had come to him clearly, and there was but one guess to make.  Marie-Anne was not on the bateau.  She had played him for a fool, had completely hoodwinked him in her plot with St. Pierre.  They were cleverer than he had supposed, and in darkness she had rejoined her husband on the raft!  But why that senseless play of falsehood?  What could be their object in wanting him to believe she was still aboard the bateau?

He stood up on his feet and mopped the warm rain from his face, while the gloom hid the grim smile that came slowly to his lips.  Close upon the thrill of his astonishment he felt a new stir in his blood which added impetus to his determination and his action.  He was not disgusted with himself, nor was he embittered by what he had thought of a moment ago as the lying hypocrisy of his captors.  To be beaten in his game of man-hunting was sometimes to be expected, and Carrigan always gave proper credit to the winners.  It was also “good medicine” to know that Marie-Anne, instead of being an unhappy and neglected wife, had blinded him with an exquisitely clever simulation.  Just why she had done it, and why St. Pierre had played his masquerade, it was his duty now to find out.

An hour ago he would have cut off a hand before spying upon St. Pierre’s wife or eavesdropping under her window.  Now he felt no uneasiness of conscience as he approached the cabin, for Marie-Anne herself had destroyed all reason for any delicate discrimination on his part.