ssile caught me fair behind the ear, and but for Jennifer's
quick wit I should have swamped the crazy shallop. In a flash he jerked
me flat between his knees and sent the pirogue with a mighty thrust
beyond the zone of fire light.

At that, though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough
to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the
spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But
afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's
paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this
gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning
lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once
again a little child sinking asleep in my young mother's arms.

XVI

HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH

'Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.
No odds how long the night, 'tis but a moment from the lapse of
consciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep that
crept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling drip
from Jennifer's paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I came
awake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and broken
dreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.

The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed of
bearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and by
the flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls of
the burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been the
well-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark of
human occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with the
reek of many fires.

When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, and
Jennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as a
tender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.

"Know you? Why should I not?" I said, wondering why the words took so
many breaths between.

"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to
babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim
death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set
me dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here
upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with
only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.

"A week?" I querie