When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.
"Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness.
"Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do not understand. I will join you in a moment.
"For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him. "Tell me quick."
"Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a nigger. That's about what it comes to."
"Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?"
"It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!"
The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.
Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.