While the priest was talking by the fireside Shif'less Sol, Long Jim, and Tom Ross slipped away. They hauled his canoe out on dry land, and with the tools that they had found on "The Galleon" quickly made it as good as ever. They also quietly put some of their own stores in the canoe, and then returned it to the water.
"O' course, he won't go comf'tably with us in our boat to New Or-lee-yuns," said Shif'less Sol. "He'll stick to his canoe an' stop to preach to Injuns who mebbe will torture him to death, but he has my respeck an' ef I kin do anything fur him I want to do it."
"So would I," said Jim Hart heartily. "I'm a pow'ful good cook ez you know, Sol, bein' ez you've et in your time more'n a hundred thousand pounds uv my victuals, an' I'd like to cook him all the buffaler an' deer steak he could eat between here an' New Or-lee-yuns, no matter how long he wuz on the way."
"An' me," said Tom Ross simply, wishing to add his mite, "I'd like to be on hand when any Injun tried to hurt him. That Injun would think he'd been struck by seven different kinds uv lightnin', all at the same time."
The fire was built on a hillock that rose above the flood. It had been kindled with the greatest difficulty, even by such experienced woodsmen as the five, but, once well started, it consumed the damp brush and spluttered and blazed merrily. Gradually a great bed of coals formed and threw out a temperate, grateful heat. All were glad enough, after the storm and the cold and the wet, to sit around it and to feel the glow upon their faces. It warmed the blood.
The hill formed an island in the flood and "The Galleon" and the canoe were tied to trees only thirty or forty feet away. Far to the west extended the great sweep of the river and around them the flooded forest was still dripping with the night's rain.
"I think I'm willin' to rest a while," said Shif'less Sol. "That wuz a pow'ful lively time we had last night, but thar wuz enough o' it an' I'd like to lay by to-day, now that our friend's canoe hez been fixed."
Father Montigny glanced up in surprise.
"My canoe repaired!" he said. "I don't understand."
"'Twas only a little job fur fellers like us," said the shiftless one. "She's all done, an' your canoe, ez good ez new, is tied up thar alongside o' our 'Gall-yun.'"