At one place, where we disembarked, M. de Radisson traced the sand with the muzzle of his musket.
"A boot-mark," said he, drawing the faint outlines of a footprint, "and egad, it's not a man's foot either!"
"Impossible!" cried Jean. "We are a thousand miles from any white-man."
"There's nothing impossible on this earth," retorted Radisson impatiently. "But pardieu, there are neither white women in this wilderness, nor ghosts wearing women's boots! I'd give my right hand to know what left that mark!"
After that his haste grew feverish. We snatched our meals by turns between paddles. He seemed to grudge the waste of each night, camping late and launching early; and it was Godefroy's complaint that each portage was made so swiftly there was no time for that solace of the common voyageur—the boatman's pipe. For eight days we travelled without seeing a sign of human presence but that one vague footmark in the sand.
"If there are no Indians, how much farther do we go, sir?" asked Godefroy sulkily on the eighth day.
"Till we find them," answered M. Radisson.
And we found them that night.
A deer broke from the woods edging the sand where we camped and had almost bounded across our fire when an Indian darted out a hundred yards behind. Mistaking us for his own people, he whistled the hunter's signal to head the game back. Then he saw that we were strangers. Pulling up of a sudden, he threw back his arms, uttered a cry of surprise, and ran to the hiding of the bush.
M. Radisson was the first to pursue; but where the sand joined the thicket he paused and began tracing the point of his rapier round the outlines of a mark.