“Are you mad, Bois-Rose?” cried Pepé.
Fabian flew towards the Canadian: “At the first step you make towards the Indian, I shall kill you,” cried he.
The old hunter felt his heart melt at the sound of the two voices that he loved so much. A short silence followed, then came the answer from the bank.
“The Blackbird wishes the white man to ask for life, and he asks for death. My wish is this, let the white man of the north quit his companions, and I swear on my father’s bones, that his life shall be saved, but his alone; the other three must die.”
Bois-Rose disdained to reply to this offer, and the Indian chief waited vainly for a refusal or an acceptance. Then he continued: “Until the hour of their death, the whites hear the voice of the Indian chief for the last time. My warriors surround the island and the river. Indian blood has been spilled and must be revenged; white blood must flow. But the Indian does not wish for this blood warmed by the ardour of the combat, he wishes for it frozen by terror, impoverished by hunger. He will take the whites living; then, when he holds them in his clutches, when they are like hungry dogs howling after a bone, he will see what men are like after fear and privation; he will make of their skin a saddle for his war-horse, and each of their scalps shall be suspended to his saddle, as a trophy of vengeance. My warriors shall surround the island for fifteen days and nights if necessary, in order to make capture of the white men.”
After these terrible menaces the Indian disappeared behind the trees. But Pepé not willing that he should believe he had intimidated them, cried as coldly as anger would permit, “Dog, who can do nothing but bark, the whites despise your vain bravados. Jackal, unclean polecat, I despise you—I—I”—but rage prevented him from saying more, and he finished off by a gesture of contempt; then with a loud laugh he sat down, satisfied at having had the last word. As for Bois-Rose he saw in it all only the refusal of his heroic sacrifice.
“Ah!” sighed the generous old man, “I could have arranged it all; now it is too late.”
The moon had gone down; the sound of distant firing had ceased, and the darkness made the three friends feel still more forcibly how easy it would have been to gain the opposite bank, carrying in their arms the wounded man. He, insensible to all that was passing, still slept heavily.
“Thus,” said Pepé, first breaking silence, “we have fifteen days to live; it is true we have not much provision, but carramba! we shall fish for food and for amusement.”
“Let us think,” said Bois-Rose, “of employing usefully the hours before daylight.”