“Hookynaster!—­Hookynaster!” growled Jack Fuller, who had followed to hear the examination of his immediate captive:  “why, your honour, that jaw-breaking name reminds me as how the chap had a bit of a paper when I chucked him into the jolly boat, stuck in his girdle.  It was covered over with pencil-marks, as writing like; but all was rubbed out agin, except some such sort of a name as that.”

“Where is it?—­what have you done with it?” hastily asked Captain de Haldimar.

“Here, in my backy-box, your honour.  I kept it safe, thinking as how it might sarve to let us know all about it afterwards.”

The sailor now drew from the receptacle just named a dirty piece of folded paper, deeply impregnated with the perfume of stale and oft rechewed quids of coarse tobacco; and then, with the air of one conscious of having “rendered the state some service,” hitched up his trowsers with one hand, while with the other he extended the important document.

To glance his eye hurriedly over the paper by the light of a dark lanthorn that had meanwhile been brought upon deck, unclasp his hunting-knife, and divide the ligatures of the captive, and then warmly press his liberated hands within his own, were, with Captain de Haldimar, but the work of a minute.

“Hilloa! which the devil way does the wind blow now?” muttered Fuller, the leer of self-satisfaction that had hitherto played in his eye rapidly giving place to an air of seriousness and surprise; an expression that was not at all diminished by an observation from his new commander.

“I tell you what it is, Jack,” said the latter, impressively; “I don’t pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain’s whistle again, if you ’ar’n’t, some how or other, in the wrong box.  That ’ere Ingian’s one of us!”

The feelings of Captain de Haldimar may easily be comprehended by our readers, when, on glancing at the paper, he found himself confirmed in the impression previously made on him by the outline of the captive’s form.  The writing, nearly obliterated by damp, had been rudely traced by his own pencil on a leaf torn from his pocket-book.  In the night of his visit to the Indian encampment, and at the moment when, seated on the fatal log, Oucanasta had generously promised her assistance in at least rescuing his betrothed bride.  They were addressed to Major de Haldimar, and briefly stated that a treacherous plan was in contemplation by the enemy to surprise the fort, which the bearer, Oucanasta (the latter word strongly marked), would fully explain, if she could possibly obtain access within.  From the narrative entered into by Clara, who had particularly dwelt on the emotions of fear that had sprung up in her own and cousin’s heart by the sudden transformation of a supposed harmless beaver into a fierce and threatening savage, he had no difficulty in solving the enigma.