t _voyageurs_ that we are, to leave for the woods without
confessing to the good father? 'Tis two years now since I have been
proper shriven, and two years is too long for a _voyageur_ to remain
unabsolved. Mother of God! When I see the lightnings and listen to that
wind, I bethink me of my sins--my sins! I vow a bale of beaver--"

"Pish! Jean," responded Du Mesne, who had come in from the cover of the
wood and was casting about in the darkness as best he might to see that
all was made secure. "Thou'lt feel better when the sun shines again.
Call Pierre Noir, and hurry, or our canoe will pound to bits upon the
beach. Come!"

All three went now knee-deep in the surf, and Du Mesne, clinging to the
gunwale as he passed out, was soon waist deep, and time and again lost
his footing in the flood.

"Pull!" he cried at last. "Now, _en avant_!" He had flung himself over
the stern, and with his knife cut the hide rope of the anchor-stone.
Overboard again in an instant, he joined the others in their rush up the
beach, and the three bore their ship upon their shoulders above the
reach of the waves.

"Myself," said Pierre Noir, "shall sleep beneath the boat to-night, for
since she sheds water from below, she may do as well from above."

"Even so, Pierre Noir," said Du Mesne, "but get you the boat farther
toward your own camp to-night. Do you not see that Monsieur L'as is not
with us?"

"_Eh bien_?"

"And were he not surely with us at such time, unless--?"

"Oh, _assurement_!" replied Pierre Noir. "Jean Breboeuf, aid me in
taking the boat back to our camp in the woods."

Now came the rain. Not in steady and even downpour, not with
intermittent showers, but in a sidelong, terrifying torrent, drenching,
biting, cutting in its violence. The swift weight of the rain gave to
the trees more burden than they could bear. As before the storm, when
all was still, there had come time and again the warning boom of a
falling tree, stricken with mysterious mortal dread of that which was to
come, so now, in the riot of that arrived danger, first one and then
another wide-armed monarch of the wood crashed down, adding with its
downfall to the testimony of the assailing tempest's strength and fury.
The lightning now came not only in ragged blazes and long ripping lines
of light, but in bursts and shocks, and in bomb-like balls, exploding
with elemental detonations. Balls of this tense surcharged essence
rolled out over the comb of the bluff