When Manikawan saw the young adventurers standing before her, her work of rescue completed and the excitement and uncertainty of the preceding days and nights at an end, she sank upon the ground, weak, dazed, and overcome with fatigue.
During sixty hours her only sleep or refreshment had been that snatched the preceding morning in the tilt, and throughout the entire period she had been bending herself to almost superhuman effort.
After all, she was but a girl. Human emotions are pretty much the same the world over, irrespective of race, and Manikawan, the Indian maiden, was very human indeed in her emotions and the limit of her physical endurance.
She looked faint and weary, indeed, as Shad and Bob bent over her solicitously, but presently she indicated her desire to rise; and slowly, for Manikawan's exhaustion was still apparent, Bob led the way while the three took a direct course to the tilt on the first lake.
It was not far, and in the course of an hour, mounting a ridge, they saw the lake shimmering below them and the little tilt nestling among the trees on the shore.
"How good it looks! Almost homelike!" said Shad.
"Aye, almost homelike," echoed Bob.
At the tilt they made a fire under the trees, and Bob quickly brewed a kettle of strong tea, and prepared food; and when Manikawan had taken nourishment, she was sent into the tilt for the rest she so much needed.
Bob and Shad were still lingering over their meal when they looked up to find Dick Blake, Ed Matheson, and Bill Campbell staring at them from the edge of the woods.
"Hello!" cried Shad, jumping up in pleasure to greet their friends.