ng his head, and he swayed
backward. He fought to recover himself, to hold himself up, but that
returning sickness reached from his brain to the pit of his stomach, and
with a groan he sank face downward on the cot. Brokaw was still talking,
but he could no longer understand his words. He heard Hauck's sharp
voice, their retreating footsteps, the opening and closing of the
door--fighting all the time to keep himself from falling off into that
black and bottomless pit again. It was many minutes before he drew
himself to a sitting posture on the edge of his cot, this time slowly
and guardedly, so that he would not rouse the pain in his head. It was
there. He could feel it burning steadily and deeply, like one of his
old-time headaches.

The bar of sunlight was gone from the wall, and through the one small
window in the west end of his room he saw the fading light of day
outside. It was morning when he had fought Brokaw; it was now almost
night. The wash-basin was where it had fallen when Henry struck him. He
saw a red stain on the floor where he must have dropped. Then again he
looked at the window. It was rather oddly out of place, so high up that
one could not look in from the outside--a rectangular slit to let in
light, and so narrow that a man could not have wormed his way through
it. He had seen nothing particularly significant in its location last
night, or this morning, but now its meaning struck him as forcibly as
that of the pieces of _babiche_ thong that bound his wrists and ankles.
A guest might be housed in this room without suspicion and at the turn
of a key be made a prisoner. There was no way of escape unless one broke
down the heavy door or cut through the log walls.

Gradually he was overcoming his sensation of sickness. His head was
clearing, and he began to breathe more deeply. He tried to move his
cramped arms. They were without feeling, lifeless weights hung to his
shoulders. With an effort he thrust out his feet. And then--through the
window--there came to him a low, thrilling sound.

It was the muffled _boom_, _boom_, _boom_ of a tom-tom.

Wapi and his Indians were going, and he heard now a weird and growing
chant, a savage paean to the wild gods of the Moulting Moon. A gasp rose
in his throat. It was almost a cry. His last hope was going--with Wapi
and his tribe! Would they help him if they knew? If he shouted? If he
shrieked for them through that open window? It was a mad thought, an
impossibl