“Let him yell at the fishes, now,” said the Mohican, laughing. “No doubt the eels will understand him; they are no more slippery than he.”

Save for the vague forms of the trees dimly discerned against the water, the darkness was impenetrable; and except for these guides, even an Indian could scarcely have moved at all. We followed the bank, keeping just within the shadows; and I was ever scanning the spots of starlit water for that same canoe which I had learned was to go upstream to watch us.

Presently the Siwanois checked me and whispered:

“Yonder squats your Wyandotte sentinel.”

“Where? I can not see him.”

“On that flat rock by the deep water, seeming a part of it.”