"I say, Patrick"——
But the Irishman was gone.
"I hope he doesn't think I'm afraid," soliloquized Hezekiah when he found he was alone. "I think I have proved by this time that I am not. If I was scairt any I would never have come out into this outlandish country. I don't know about that though," he added, after a moment's thought; "I did hate to come into this wilderness most terribly, but I had to do it, and I might as well own up, when there's no one to hear me, that I was most thunderingly scairt, and am this minute. What do I want to go crawling around this cussed island for? I wish I had never seen it. I've a great notion to wade over to the Kentucky shore, and go home."
We must do Smith the credit, however, of stating that he did not even attempt to act upon this thought. When a moment's reflection showed him how contemptible and cowardly such a course would be, he felt like butting his head against a tree, that he should have allowed himself to entertain such an idea for a moment.
"I hope the Irishman knows enough to keep his eyes about him," he continued. "That young Waring was right in saying the crisis of the danger would be reached to-night. We're in the crisis now, and a derned ticklish affair it is, too."
Hezekiah was standing in the attitude of acute attention, every faculty absorbed in the one of listening, when his whole being was thrilled by the explosion of two rifles, followed by a series of horrid yells that made his blood curdle. It needed no thought to tell him that these came from the throats of the Shawanoes, and that the most that he had feared had taken place.
His first impression was that Pat Mulroony had been discovered, and fired upon, and that his own safety was in imminent danger; but, when he came to reflect more quietly, he knew by the distance of the sounds, that they came from the upper portion of the island, and that it was the friends who had been left behind that were attacked. Believing, then, that Pat was safe for the present, he decided to remain in his present position until he was rejoined by him.
Hezekiah had hardly come to this conclusion when a slight grating noise upon the shingle of the beach caught his ear, and turning his head he saw that a canoe had just landed within twenty feet of him, and, at that very moment, two painted Indians were in the act of stepping ashore. With his heart in his throat, he shivered around to the opposite side of the tree, and tremblingly watched the actions of these savages.
They were very deliberate in their movements, seeming to take notice of the tumult which, a moment before, had broken the profound stillness of stream and wood.
First pulling the canoe high upon the land, each took a rifle from it, and then strode directly toward the tree which concealed the frightened man. As they passed so near, that he could have touched him with his own rifle, he absolutely believed they would hear his heart beat. But such a thing has never taken place, no matter how wildly that organ has throbbed, and then the Indians, who would have detected the faintest sound, passed on, and disappeared in the wood of the island, without once suspecting how nigh they had been to one of the very beings for whom they were searching.