THEY put us in their canoe at last and set off to the northward. We fell asleep the moment we were in the canoe and stayed so until our captors prodded us awake with their paddles. It was late at night when we staggered ashore and into a tumult more suggestive of madmen at large, celebrating their freedom from restraint, than of any portion of a British army.

We were on the southern point of Grand Isle, and through the trees shone the lights of many campfires. Around the fires were hundreds of Indians, turning, gesturing, bending, capering, prancing. They were dancing to the tune of incessant yowlings, the thudding of wooden drums and the monotonous dry rattling of pebbles in turtle-shell rattles.

Their caterwauling was contagious; for no sooner had our captors lifted the canoe from the water than they humped their backs and began a jerky stamping, emitting piercing yells—“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”—as if suffering excruciating stomach pains.

At sight of us, those who sang and danced became more violent, whooping and cavorting in a frenzy of triumph.

On rising land beyond the campfires were four tents, recognizable as officers’ tents because sentries marched before them. The sentries were brown-faced Canadians in greenish buckskin hunting shirts; and as sentries they were not a success, for Sponge-belly and his six Indians, with us in their midst, pushed contemptuously past them, and scratched and picked at the flap of the nearest tent, thrusting their fingers through the openings.

Knowing something of the rancorous nature of British officers, I wasn’t surprised when the tent flap was violently thrown open from within to reveal a tall, buckskin-clad man in a boiling rage, bellowing imprecations in obscene French.

The man himself was a surprise indeed. I recognized him instantly, even in the dim candle-light against which he was silhouetted, and with something of bewilderment and wrathful indignation; for he was the silent, self-effacing gentleman with whom we had traveled to America on the Beau Soleil—Mr. Leonard.

When, in my astonishment, I spoke his name, this extraordinary personage slowly fastened up the flap and went back to stand behind the rough table which, with two camp stools and the bearskin spread over a pile of spruce tips in the corner, comprised the almost luxurious furnishings of the tent.

When our captors pushed us in, there were twelve of us in that small canvas structure; and immediately, what with the Indians, Doc’s asafoetida, and our own weary and unwashed state, it smelled like a den of foxes. Whether it was that odor which caused Nathaniel to lean more and more heavily against my shoulder, or the sharp memories of Marie de Sabrevois that the sight of Mr. Leonard brought to his mind, I couldn’t tell. The fact was, however, that Nathaniel was slipping away from us again.