d have seen me sleep so soddenly. I
expected every moment to see her in the crowd.

But when I reached the beach the crowd was straying as if the
excitement were over. Far out on the water to the northeast was a
flotilla of canoes fast disappearing. Whom did they carry? Had they
left from the camp? I cursed myself for my lost hours. The threads of
the situation had slipped from my hand, and all my feeling of
competence and hope of the night before had gone with them. I could
see no sign of the woman nor of Starling. Pierre's red head was a
beacon, but I dared not go to him. He was bending over a caldron of
boiling meat, and I saw that my man was himself again, and that the
trencher called him more winningly than any voice of mine. I shrugged,
and went to the beach to make what toilet I could. The cold water
recreated me. I was more a man when I strolled back in the crowd.

And then I saw Labarthe. He was unbound and mingling with the Indians.
Leclerc was close beside him, shuffling and docile; he, too, was free,
as was Pierre. Four of us, and our hands at liberty. This looked
better. I hummed a tune, clapped a brave on the shoulder, and motioned
him to bring me meat and meal. But where was the woman?

I saw Labarthe working toward me with his eyes the other way, so I knew
he had news. He was nimbler witted than Pierre, though less valuable
on a long stretch. I dreaded Leclerc, for he could not be trusted even
for good sense, and I heartily wished him elsewhere. But Pierre came
to the rescue; he called Leclerc boldly, and drew him to the meat
caldron. I was satisfied. Three of us were working in unison,--and we
had worked together in this way before, and won. But where were
Pemaou, and Starling, and the woman?

Labarthe made his way near, and stood with his back toward me. I
remembered a roundelay that we had sung in camp. I whistled it,
picking, in the meantime, at the bone the Indian had brought. I
whistled the tune once, twice, several times. Then I fitted words to
it.

"Where is the woman? Where is the Englishman? Tell me." I sang the
words boldly, but in bastard French with clipped accents. I feared
that among all these Senecas there might be one or more who had some
smattering of the French tongue.

Labarthe did not answer at once nor look around, so I went on singing.
Nonsense words now, with no coherence or meaning, and all in French
that a cowherd would have been ashamed to