streets, when my knee
suddenly struck some obstacle, and seeking to learn what it might be, I
muttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I touched the unmistakable
sides of a boat. It was a lumping, awkward craft, rudely fashioned,
yet of a seeming length of keel and breadth of beam that set my heart
beating with new joy, as I wondered if it was not the same craft in
which the Kinzie family put forth upon the lake the morning of the
massacre. This seemed very likely, for there could hardly be two such
boats at hand, where the Indian water-craft were slender, fragile
canoes, poorly fitted for serious battle with lake waves. Doubtless
this was the only vessel Sau-ga-nash could find suitable for the
venture, or he would never have chosen it for the use of a single man,
as it was of a size to require the services of several paddles. Yet
the thought meant much; for this very lack of water-craft was likely to
render pursuit by the baffled savages impossible, if only once we got
fairly away from the shore.

With these reflections driving swiftly through my brain, I ran one hand
hastily along the thwarts of the boat, seeking to discover if paddles
had been provided, or even a sail of any kind. I touched a coil of
rope, a rude oar-blade so broad as to seem unwieldy, a tightly rolled
cloth,--and then my groping fingers rested on the oddest-feeling thing
that ever a startled man touched in the dark. It was God's mercy I did
not cry out from the sudden nervous fit that seized me. The thing I
touched had a round, smooth, creepy feeling of flesh about it, so that
I believed I fingered a corpse; until it began to turn slowly under my
hand like a huge ball, the loose skin of it twitching yet revealing no
human features to my touch. Saint Andrew! but it frightened me! I
knew not what species of strange animal it might prove to be, nor
whence its grip or sting might come. Yet the odd feeling of it was
strangely fascinating,--I could not let it go; the damp flesh-like skin
seemed to cling to my fingers in a horrible sort of magnetism that
bound me prisoner, the cold perspiration of terror bursting from every
pore, even as my other hand, trembling and unnerved, sought in my shirt
for the knife of Little Sauk.

As I gripped the weapon, the thing began to straighten out, coming up
in the quick odd jerks with which some snakes uncoil their joints after
the torpidity of winter. My hand, finding naught to grasp, slipped
from the