been seen in a small canoe rangin' about by himself like a
madman searchin' for her."

"The moment we reach the Mountain I'll get hold of a canoe and go in
search of him," said Lambert.

"Right, boy! right!" said Ravenshaw; "I fear that something may have
happened to the poor lad. These small canoes are all very well when you
can run ashore and mend 'em if they should get damaged, but out here,
among sunk posts and fences, and no land to run to, it is dangerous
navigation.--Hist! Did ye hear a cry, lads?"

The men ceased to talk, and listened intently, while they gazed round
the watery waste in all directions.

Besides a stranded house here and there, and a few submerged trees,
nothing was to be seen on the water save the carcasses of a few cattle,
above which a couple of ravens were wheeling slowly.

The cry was not repeated.

"Imagination," muttered old Ravenshaw to himself, after Lambert had
given a lusty shout, which, however, elicited no reply.

"It must have been; I hear nothing," said Lambert, looking round
uneasily.

"Come, out oars again, lads," said the old gentleman, as the sail
flapped in the failing breeze. "Night will catch us before we reach--.
Hallo! back your oars--hard! Catch hold of 'im."

A living creature of some sort came out from behind a floating log at
that moment, and was almost run down. The man at the bow oar leaned
over and caught it. The yell which followed left no shadow of doubt as
to the nature of the creature. It was a pig. During the next two
minutes, while it was being hauled into the boat, it made the air ring
with shrieks of concentrated fury. Before dismissing this pig, we may
state that it was afterwards identified by its owner, who said it had
been swept way from his house two days before, and must therefore have
been swimming without relief for eight-and-forty hours.

"That accounts for the cry you heard," said Louis Lambert, when the
screams subsided.

"No, Louis; a pig's voice is too familiar to deceive me. If it was not
imagination, it was the voice of a man."

The old trader was right. One of the objects which, in the distance,
resembled so closely the floating carcass of an ox was in reality an
overturned canoe, and to the stern of that canoe Herr Winklemann was
clinging. He had been long in the water, and was almost too much
exhausted to see or cry. When the boat passed he thought he heard
voices. Hope revived for a moment, and he uttered a fe