, and he slunk back quickly against the cabin,
with the thought that other eyes might be staring out into that same
darkness. In the pitch gloom that followed he lowered himself quietly
into the river, thrust himself under water, and struck out for the
opposite shore.

When he came to the surface again it was in the glare of another
lightning flash. He flung the water from his face, chose a point
several hundred yards above the raft, and with quick, powerful strokes
set out in its direction. For ten minutes he quartered the current
without raising his head. Then he paused, floating unresistingly with
the slow sweep of the river, and waited for another illumination. When
it came, he made out the tented raft scarcely a hundred yards away and
a little below him. In the next darkness he found the edge of it and
dragged himself up on the mass of timbers.

The thunder had been rolling steadily westward, and David crouched low,
hoping for one more flash to illumine the raft. It came at last from a
mass of inky cloud far to the west, so indistinct that it made only dim
shadows out of the tents and shelters, but it was sufficient to give
him direction. Before its faint glare died out, he saw the deeper
shadow of the cabin forward.

For many minutes he lay where he had dragged himself, without making a
movement in its direction. Nowhere about him could he see a sign of
light, nor could he hear any sound of life. St. Pierre's people were
evidently deep in slumber.

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 satisfactio