"But," answered Menehwehna with a cheerful readiness which proved that he had thought the matter out, "if, as you say, the Governor receive us kindly, we will hide that you are English; to that every man shall give his oath beforehand. If things go ill, we will hand you back as our prisoner and prove that we have kept you against your will."
John shook his head, but did not utter the firm resolve of his heart—that even from ignominy no such lies should save him while he had a gun to turn against himself. "Why do you fear then, Menehwehna," he demanded, "if not for me?"
"Do not ask, my brother!" Menehwehna's voice was troubled, constrained, and his eyes avoided John's.
"Ah, well," said John lightly, after regarding him for a moment, "to you at least I will pay some of my debt. Go and tell your people that I am English; and add—for it will save talk—that I am ready to go with them to Fort Niagara."
By dawn on the third day at Fort Rouillé three canoes lay finished and ready, each capable of carrying eight or nine men. Pushing off from the Toronto shore, the embassage paddled southward across the lake.
They came late that evening to a point of land four miles from Niagara, on the north side of the river mouth. Approaching it, they discerned many clusters of Indian encampments, each sending up its thin column of smoke against the sunset-darkened woods: but night had fallen long before they beached their canoes, and for the last three miles they paddled wide of the shore to skirt a fleet of fishing-boats twinkling with flambeaux, from the rays of which voices challenged them. The Ojibways answered with their own call and were made welcome. A common fear, it seemed, lay over all the nations— Wyandots and Attiwandaronks from the west and north of Lake Erie, Nettaways and Tobacco Indians from around Nottawasaga Bay, Ottawas and Pottawatamies from the far west—who had not yet made their peace with the English. But Menehwehna, whose fear of arriving too late had kept him anxious throughout the voyage, grew cheerful again.
They landed and pitched their camp on a spit of land close beside their old friend the Ottawa chief from L'Arbre Croche, to whose lodge Menehwehna at once betook himself to learn the news. But John, weary with the day's toil, threw himself down and slept.
A touch on his shoulder awakened him at dawn, and he opened his eyes to see Menehwehna standing above him, gun in hand and dressed for an expedition.
"Come," commanded Menehwehna, adding, as John's gaze travelled around upon the sleepers, "We two, alone."
John caught up his gun, and the pair stepped out into the dawn together. An Indian path led through the forest to the southward, and Menehwehna took it, walking ahead and rapidly. Twice he turned about and looked John in the face with a searching gaze, but held on his way again without speaking. They walked in a dawn which as yet resembled night rather than day; a night grown diaphanous and ghostlike, a summer night surprised in its sleep and vanishing before their footfall. The flicker of fire-flies hurrying into deeper shades seemed, by a trick of eyesight, to pass into the glint of dew. The birds had not yet broken into singing, the shadows stirred with whispers, as though their broods of winged and creeping things held breath together in alarm. A thin mist drifted through the undergrowth, muffling the roar of distant waters; and at intervals the path led across a clearing where, between the pine-trunks to the left, the lake itself came into view, with clouds of vapour heaving on its bosom.