er,
immediately to throw out flankers, with a view to meet their foes at all
points, and if possible to turn their rear. That some such course was
now adopted he believed from the tramp of feet, which not only came up
the ascent, as related, but were also heard, under the first impulse,
diverging not only towards the hill in the rear, but towards the
extremity of the point, in a direction opposite to that he was about
to take himself. Promptitude, consequently became a matter of the last
importance, as the parties might meet on the strand, before the fugitive
could reach the canoe.

Notwithstanding the pressing nature of the emergency, Deerslayer
hesitated a single instant, ere he plunged into the bushes that lined
the shore. His feelings had been awakened by the whole scene, and a
sternness of purpose had come over him, to which he was ordinarily
a stranger. Four dark figures loomed on the ridge, drawn against the
brightness of the fire, and an enemy might have been sacrificed at a
glance. The Indians had paused to gaze into the gloom, in search of the
screeching hag, and with many a man less given to reflection than the
hunter, the death of one of them would have been certain. Luckily he was
more prudent. Although the rifle dropped a little towards the foremost
of his pursuers, he did not aim or fire, but disappeared in the
cover. To gain the beach, and to follow it round to the place where
Chingachgook was already in the canoe, with Hist, anxiously waiting his
appearance, occupied but a moment. Laying his rifle in the bottom of the
canoe, Deerslayer stooped to give the latter a vigorous shove from the
shore, when a powerful Indian leaped through the bushes, alighting like
a panther on his back. Everything was now suspended by a hair; a false
step ruining all. With a generosity that would have rendered a Roman
illustrious throughout all time, but which, in the career of one so
simple and humble, would have been forever lost to the world but
for this unpretending legend, Deerslayer threw all his force into a
desperate effort, shoved the canoe off with a power that sent it a
hundred feet from the shore, as it might be in an instant, and fell
forward into the lake, himself, face downward; his assailant necessarily
following him.

Although the water was deep within a few yards of the beach, it was not
more than breast high, as close in as the spot where the two combatants
fell. Still this was quite sufficient to destroy