and
joined Cadillac and his officers, I was but surly company, and soon
turned my back upon them, to stare off at the lake.

It was a breezeless morning, and the lake was without ripple. It lay
like one of the metal mirrors that we sell the Indians, a lustreless
gray sheet that threw back twisted pictures. I looked off at the east,
and thought of the dull leagues that lay behind me, and the uncounted
ones before, and I realized that the morning air was cold, and that I
hated the dark, secret water that led through this strange land. Yet,
even as I scowled at it, the disk of the sun climbed over the island's
rim, and laid a shining pathway through the gray,--a pathway that ended
at my feet.

I felt my pulse quicken. After all, it was a fair world, and the air,
though keen, was a cordial. I let my gaze travel up that shining,
glimmering track, and while I looked it was suddenly flecked with
canoes. Long and brown, they swung down toward me like strong-winged
birds upheld by the path of the sunrise.

I looked back at the Indians. They, too, had seen the canoes, but they
made no sound of welcome. Bedizened and wolf-eyed, they stood in
formal ranks as attentive as children at a pantomime. In a moment the
canoes took clearer shape, and the shine of the paddles could be seen
as the flat of the blades slanted toward the light. The men at the
paddles were indistinguishable, crouching shapes, but their prisoner
was standing. He stood in the foremost canoe, and as his figure was
outlined against the sun I saw that he was rigid as a mummy. I turned
to Cadillac. To see a white man bound! I could feel the thongs eating
into my own flesh.

"They have bound the Englishman!" I protested. "Let us hope that they
are not daring enough--or crazed enough--to make him sing to grace
their triumph."

But he laughed at my tone. "What does it matter?" he shrugged. "These
wards of mine--my happy family--must have their fete in their own
fashion, or they will ask that I pay the piper. Well, whatever they
do, the prisoner is in our hands, and it will be long before he escapes
them. Yes, listen,--oh, the play-acting dogs!--they are making him
sing now."

He had a keen ear, for, even to my forest-trained sense, the sound came
but faintly. The crowd hushed its breathing, and the air was
unwholesomely still. A dog yelped, and an Indian silenced it with a
kick. Each paddle-stroke threw the canoes into sharper relief, and we