All that day Doc meditated, contemplating the ducks and geese that rose continuously before us and circled over us, with the sound of enormous whisperings. These wild-fowl were as numerous as the blueberries on our cut-over lands in Maine. There were times when their passage above our heads cast heavy shadows, as if clouds moved between us and the sun: other times when the splatter of their rising, on our approach, was like the rushing of quick water in an angry river. Their monotonous movement seemed to stimulate him, and his lips moved spasmodically.

He rid himself of his first speech after we had finished our dinner by the campfire that night.

He got out his Venesection Mannekin, as we had told him to do, and studied it with an air of profundity. He consulted his Culpeper’s Herbal and drew designs on the ground with a twig, muttering what must have sounded to the Indians like incantations. This, Verrieul said, was the way to impress Indians, though you had to be sensible about it, as well as mysterious, or in time they would become suspicious. But the most important thing, Verrieul said, was for Doc to sound wise, yet be sufficiently enigmatic to make the Indians scratch their heads a little.

Verrieul sat quiet until Doc’s mutterings grew outrageous. Then he announced to Sponge-belly that Doc wished to make an oration. Sponge-belly nodded, and the Indians, sucking at their pipes, fastened eager eyes on Doc. It was not what Doc said, however, that benefited us most, but what he did.

He made a valiant effort to look proud and ponderous; but since he was gentle and kindly when unenraged, his words, at first, were almost apologetic.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, blinking at Sponge-belly, “what I got to say can be said quick. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.”

When Verrieul had translated, Sponge-belly and the others set up a yowping, like seals in a cage, howking for fish. It seemed to cheer Doc, and make him freer.

“We come from a distant country, me and my children,” he went on, pointing at Verrieul and me. “Our country is far to the eastward, close to the home of the Great Spirit. We’re glad to travel to the westward, me and my children, even though it’s kind of upset our plans. We’re glad to travel to the home of Sponge-belly and these other weasels of his. It’s about the only place in the world where we ain’t been. Only by traveling all over hell an’ gone can we find out whether the pictures in this book of healing are fitted to be used in Sponge-belly’s country as well as in our own country, close to the home of the Great Spirit.”

He opened his Culpeper’s Herbal and peered into it absent-mindedly while Verrieul translated.