Meanwhile, with the strong set of currents bearing it eastward along the coast, all the tangled top-hamper of the wreck drifted away, and in the midst of it was Crawford. So it happened that the four men, staggering onward by the shore, came upon this tangle of lines and spars, grounded upon a shallow.
Crawford was alive and awake by this time, but there was scarce enough life in his brain to admit any impressions; his body was quite helpless, sodden garments fast frozen to the maintop that held him above water, and waves still breaking over him. None the less, he dimly comprehended that there was clear sunlight overhead, and that the tempest was over. So he was not dead after all! Not dead, yet not far from it; and evidently dreaming, since there dimly pierced to his senses, as though from some great distance, the brazen tones of Moses Deakin.
“What, ye will not? Blood and wounds, but I say ye shall! Into the water, all of ye! In, and haul him ashore. But for him ye’d be frozen stark in irons this minute, ye rogues; and Moses Deakin pays tit for tat. Move sharp, or I’ll bash your lousy heads!”
Crawford tried to see who spoke, but his feeble gaze could comprehend only ice and water. The spars and wreckage surged. Then in front of him he beheld a fragment of jagged wood upflung, and it came toppling at him, nor could he move a muscle to avoid it. Down it came, crashed him across the head and forced him under the water, and again his eyes closed and he knew no more.
After this, he had a strange vision. A delicious pain ran through his whole body as warmth crept into it, and soft fingers of women were dressing his hurts, and he was sipping hot broth. He saw around him strange dark faces which he took for Indians. Not the redskins he had known in New York, but flatter-faced people, lacking the pride and fierceness of the Iroquois, sloven with dirt. Then all this drifted away again on the wings of sleep.
With his next awakening, however, Crawford was himself in mind if not in body, and though his head was heavily bandaged, his senses were clear enough. He awoke to warmth, and sunlight flooding above sparkling wave-crests, and the slow rise and fall and surge of a craft under sail. He perceived that he was sitting propped up amidships in a long canoe; behind his shoulders was a pole, to either end of which was lashed a bit of plank. These planks went down into the water on each side of the canoe, acting in place of centreboard. The craft was speeding forward under a good breeze, was heading to the north, and her sail was made from patched tarpaulin. Two men, at first strangers to Crawford, were lying asleep in the bow; but presently he recognized them for two of Moses Deakin’s men. From behind him sounded the rumbling tones of Deakin himself, conversing with another.
“Ay, that’s the wreck of Iberville’s ship down yonder. She’s a good two leagues off the land, and the same from the fort. Smoke i’ the trees means that some o’ them have got safe ashore, plague blister them!”
“We’d ha’ better chance for life with them than i’ the wilderness,” grumbled the unseen man. “What be the use o’ making Danish river, Master? Injuns won’t be there this time o’ year, and we have no ship.”
“How know ye that, ye rogue?” snapped Deakin fiercely, then laughed. “No Injuns? Wait and see. If they ha’ word for me from the Star Woman, they’ll be there waiting. As for the ship, we left three men aboard her. Soon’s the ice let her free, they’d bring her across the bay to our old place. We have only to wait. And if they come not, what then? Why, make the best of it! Blood and wounds, can we not winter with the redskins? Or we can come south again after the fighting’s done and take a craft from one o’ the forts. As for that, the Star Woman herself may well be waiting to meet me, as I bade her! Hark—ay, that devil Iberville is safe ashore! Hear the great gun from the fort, eh? Likely Iberville is hammering at the gate with his naked fists.”
The dull note of a distant cannon rolled to them from the distant forested shore.