We seemed, somehow, to have become Indians. Our bodies were blackened with soot and grease, which stuck to us even when we leaped in the rivers and lakes, which we regularly did twice daily and frequently oftener, following the example of our red companions. Our faces were painted, we were stripped to belt cloths and moccasins. Yet it was not our paint and our nakedness that made us feel like Indians, but rather our state of health. Never at any time in my life had I felt myself so wholly a healthy man, with a body so light and yet so able to endure fatigue.

… Gautier, we knew, would watch us unceasingly. If we were ever to escape, we realized, we must never betray our sympathies. Like spies, we must forever sing the praises of the things we most feared and hated; and in this occupation Doc and Verrieul became proficient, bursting into tirades against Americans whenever they suspected they were overheard.

At our camp on Fox River, one night, we heard a faint rustle behind our overturned canoe, beneath which we sat. Doc rolled a suspicious eye at the sound, and immediately began to talk loudly for effect.

“I do believe,” he said, “that there ain’t nothing as hypocritical as an American. The Philistines were pretty bad, but they couldn’t hold a candle to Americans.”

“A low set,” Verrieul agreed heartily.

“Why,” Doc said, “there ain’t a gentleman among ’em! Practically every one of ’em works!”

“Impossible!” Verrieul murmured.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Doc said. “They got the idea that one man’s as good as another, and that a feller like you or me has as much right to walk right plum down the middle of the road as the Duke of Buggerum.”

Verrieul seemed shocked. “I had no idea it was as bad as that!”

“It’s worse’n that,” Doc insisted. “America’s a nation of shopkeepers! What you think of a country that not only ain’t got sense enough to have a King, but ain’t got enough sense to have any important offices at all, like the Queen’s Bedchamber Women, or Wet Nurse to the Prince of Wales, or Porter of the Back Stairs for the Princess Amelia, or Heater of the Water for the Horses, or an Honorable Band of Suberannalated Gentlemen Pensioners at five hundred dollars a year apiece, like you can read about in my Almanack! Why, Americans don’t pay their generals as much as His Royal Majesty, God bless him, pays the Cistern Cleaner to His Majesty’s Household!”

“They don’t understand such refinements,” Verrieul said. “They’re mere money grubbers.”

“And brag!” Doc complained. “You never heard so much brag! To hear ’em talk, you’d think they had a chanst of licking England!”

“Canaille!” Verrieul said.