Strong arms grasped Anthony—pulled him up to blessed air. He was kept afloat and dragged free of the rapids. With the Sieur Joliet's fingers in his hair to help, he began to swim again. They gained the bank and clambered to safety.
But the coureur de bois—that laughing, hairy faun—had perished with the Indian.
In bitterness and despair the boy fell upon the sod and abandoned himself to grief.
The Sieur Joliet stood white and cold, like a ghost from whom all hope has fled.
Oh, the cruelty of fate! To carry them harmless through half a hundred rapids, only to shipwreck them in sight of home!
A long, hard voyage had come to naught; the proof of his greatest discovery was lost.
"I have nothing left but my life," he groaned.
Bruised and battered, soaking wet and in rags, they trudged on through a forest path. Sometimes they sank in utter weariness; oftener they supported each other with renewed courage. And so at last the fort came in sight and opened its comforting home-like gates to them.
Here the sorrowful Anthony saw the explorer give his empty hands to the commandant. It seemed to the boy that all the glory of their expedition had gone out in tragedy like the poor little slave who was lost in the rapids.