raiders, who were moving their oars
mechanically as the canoe glided on.

"It must be a dream," he said to himself. "I shall awake soon, and--"

"What a chance, Mas' Don!" said a low voice at his side, to prove to him
that he was awake.

"Chance? What chance?" said Don, starting.

"I don't mean to get away, but for any other tribe to give it to them,
and serve 'em as they served our poor friends; for they was friends to
us, Mas' Don."

"I wish the wretches could be punished," said Don sadly; "but I see no
chance of that."

"Ah! Wait a bit, my lad; you don't know. But what a chance it would be
with them all in this state. If it wasn't that I don't care about being
drowned, I should like to set to work with my pocket knife, and make a
hole in the bottom of the canoe."

"It would drown the innocent and the guilty, Jem."

"Ay, that's so, my lad. I say, Mas' Don, arn't you hungry?"

"Yes, I suppose so, Jem. Not hungry; but I feel as if I have had no
food. I am too miserable to be hungry."

"So am I sometimes when my shoulder burns; at other times I feel as if I
could eat wood."

They sat in silence as the moon rose higher, and the long lines of
paddles in the different boats looked more weird and strange, while in
the distance a mountain top that stood above the long black line of
trees flashed in the moonlight as if emitting silver fire.

"Wonder where they'll take us?" said Jem, at last.

"To their _pah_, I suppose," replied Don, dreamily.

"I s'pose they'll give us something to eat when we get there, eh?"

"I suppose so, Jem. I don't know, and I feel too miserable even to try
and think."

"Ah," said Jem; "that's how those poor women and the wounded prisoners
feel, Mas' Don; but they're only copper-coloured blacks, and we're
whites. We can't afford to feel as they do. Look here, my lad, how
soon do you think you'll be strong enough to try and escape?"

"I don't know, Jem."

"I say to-morrow."

"Shall you be fit?"

Jem was silent for a few minutes.

"I'm like you, Mas' Don," he said. "I dunno; but I tell you what, we
will not say to-morrow or next day, but make up our minds to go first
chance. What do you say to that?"

"Anything is better than being in the power of such wretches as these,
Jem; so let's do as you say."

Jem nodded his head as he sat in the bottom of the canoe in the broad
moonlight, and Don watched the soft silver sea, the black velvet-looking
shore, and the brill