e, "Ought we to make a landing now?"

"Not yet," replied the Onondaga. "The storm merely growls and threatens
at present. It will not strike for perhaps an hour."

"But when it does strike it's going to hit a mighty blow unless all
signs fail. I've seen 'em gather before, and this is going to be a king
of storms! Hear that thunder now! It doesn't growl any more, but goes
off like the cracking of big cannon."

"But it's still far in the west," persisted Tayoga, as the three bent
over their paddles.

The forest, however, was groaning with the wind, and little waves rose
on the river. Now the lightning flared again and again, so fierce and
bright that Robert, despite his control of himself, instinctively
recoiled from it as from the stroke of a saber.

"Do you recall any shelter farther on, Tayoga?" asked the hunter.

"The overhanging bank and the big hollow in the stone," replied the
Onondaga. "On the left! Don't you remember?"

"Now I do, Tayoga, but I didn't know it was near. Do you think we can
make it before that sky over our heads splits wide open?"

"It will be a race," replied the young Iroquois, "but we three are
strong, and we are skilled in the use of the paddle."

"Then we'll bend to it," said Willet. And they did. The canoe shot
forward at amazing speed over the surface of the river, inky save when
the lightning flashed upon it. Robert paddled as he had never paddled
before, his muscles straining and the perspiration standing out on his
face. He was thoroughly inured to forest life, but he knew that even the
scouts and Indians fled for shelter from the great wilderness
hurricanes.

There was every evidence that the storm would be of uncommon violence.
The moan of the wind rose to a shriek and they heard the crash of
breaking boughs and falling trees in the forest. The river, whipped
continually by the gusts, was broken with waves upon which the canoe
rocked with such force that the three, expert though they were, were
compelled to use all their skill, every moment, to keep it from being
overturned. If it had not been for the rapid and vivid strokes of
lightning under which the waters turned blood red their vessel would
have crashed more than once upon the rocks, leaving them to swim for
life.

"That incessant flare makes me shiver," said Robert. "It seems every
time that I'm going to be struck by it, but I'm glad it comes, because
without it we'd never see our way on the river."

"Manitou sends