“The wind will take it up the bay,” the younger boy explained. “It may stay right side up, it may not. It may be shattered on the rocks or washed on some beach. Wherever Ohrante finds it, it will be a long way from here.”
“It will not help him to pick up our trail certainly,” Hugh exclaimed. “That was a clever thought, Blaise.”
Blaise turned to lead the way up the crack. It was black dark in the fissure. Patches of moonlit sky could be seen overhead, between the branches and spreading sprays of the cedars, but no light penetrated to the bottom. Guiding themselves by their outstretched hands, and feeling for each step, as they had done on that other night when they had entered this cleft, the two made their way up. As he thought of that other night, Hugh put his hand to his breast to feel if the precious packet was still there, attached to a piece of fish line around his neck. It was luck that the Indians had merely taken his weapons and had not searched him.
Feeling along the left wall of the gap, Blaise found the slit that led into the pit where the furs had been concealed, but he did not squeeze through. He led on up the wider rift. Where the walls were less sheer and trees grew on the gully bottom, pushing through in the darkness became increasingly difficult. When the brothers had come that way in daylight, they had found it troublesome enough. Now exposed roots and undergrowth snared Hugh’s toes, rocks and tree trunks bruised his shoulders, prickly evergreen branches scratched his face and caught his clothes. These were small troubles, however, not to be heeded by a fugitive flying from such a cruel fate as Ohrante had in mind for him. The boy’s only desire was to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the giant Mohawk. Indeed he had to hold himself in restraint to keep from panic flight.
After a few hundred feet of stumbling, groping progress, the two came to the broken birch, ghostly in the moonlight which shone down into the open space where the guide tree stood. They paused for a moment. On either hand and ahead the growth was thick.
“Which way now?” Hugh whispered the words as if he still feared an enemy lurking near.
“Straight ahead to the top of the high ridge. It will be difficult. I know not if we can do it in the darkness.”
“We must do it,” said Hugh emphatically.
Blaise nodded. “We will try,” he agreed.
The ground was low here, protected from the lake by the rock ridge with its rifts and cracks. A few steps beyond the little birch, the lads found themselves in a veritable tangle of growth, through which but little light penetrated from the sky. They struggled forward among close standing, moss-draped, half dead evergreens and old rotten birches, their feet sinking deep into the soft leaf mould and decayed wood that formed the soil. Where fallen trees had made an opening that let in a little light, thickets of bushes and tangles of ground yew had grown up, more difficult to penetrate than the black woods. Compelled to make their way, for the most part, by feeling instead of sight, they could go but slowly. Hugh soon lost all sense of direction, and he wondered whether Blaise knew where he was going.