"A Huron scout sorely wounded and helpless," answered the Beaver.
"Is he alone?"
"He is alone. There was another with him, but he was killed two days since. Help or I perish."
"Art thou Chebacno or Wabensickewa?"
"I am Wabensickewa. Chebacno was slain by the Iroquois, who are even now making ready a war-party. I hastened back to bring news of it, and landed here to rest until darkness. While I slept a panther leaped on my back. Before I could kill him he had so injured me that I cannot walk. Also are my eyes blinded so that I cannot see. I have a canoe that you will find at the water's edge, if indeed the wind has not drifted it away. I have called many times, and was about to give over calling when your answer came to lend me new strength. Now, then, my brothers, come quickly, for I have much to tell before I die."
A moment later Nahma felt a slight jar pass through the log against which he lay and heard a few whispered words of consultation. Then two figures stepped ashore and, passing so close to him that he could have touched them, noiselessly entered the forest. He waited for a moment and then cautiously lifted his head. Against the faint gleam of water he could distinguish the black bulk of a canoe and see that it still held two other figures who sat motionless. Slowly he raised his bow with a stone-headed arrow fitted to its string until one of the sitting figures was fairly covered. Then he waited with tense muscles and a heart that seemed like to burst with its furious beating. From behind him came a low moaning that he knew was made by the Beaver to deceive his enemies.
Suddenly the oppressive silence was broken by the twang of a bowstring that was instantly followed by fierce yells. High above these rose the defiant war-cry of the Iroquois, but its last note was cut short and ended in a choking gurgle.
Somehow Nahma managed to hear these things, though he was at the same time intensely busy with affairs of his own. At the first intimation of a struggle behind him he had let fly his ready arrow, and one of the two figures in the canoe dropped heavily forward. The other, seeing what he had supposed was a log suddenly endowed with life and leaping towards him, uttered a cry of terror, sprang overboard, and disappeared beneath the black waters. While Nahma tossed the limp form of the other Huron from the canoe preparatory to going in pursuit of this swimmer, a rustling among the bushes warned him to make good his own escape while yet he might, and giving the canoe a great shove, he leaped aboard.
As the craft shot out into the open a voice hailed it from the shore; but as the words were spoken in the Huron tongue, Nahma made no answer. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether it might not be the Beaver who called; but with a repetition of the demand he knew that that was not the case. He was confirmed in this belief by hearing a slight splash from close at hand, a stifled exclamation, and a few whispered words. Evidently the swimmer who had made so hasty an exit from the canoe had been encouraged by the voice of a friend to gain the land, and now the two were once more in communication.