Then he turned to go. But Mizpah was at his side instantly, catching him by the wrist, and imploring him to tell us which way her child had been carried.
Grûl stopped and looked down upon her with austere dignity, but without replying. Passionately Mizpah entreated him, not to be denied; and at last, lightly but swiftly removing her fingers from his wrist, he muttered oracularly:—
"They will take him to the sea that is within the heart of the land! But go!" he repeated with energy, "or you will not go far!" and with steps so smooth that they seemed not to touch the ground, he went past the cliff foot. His gaudy mantle shone for a moment, and he was gone.
The ominous urgency of his warning rang in our ears, and we were not slow in making our own departure.
"What does he mean by 'the sea that is within the heart of the land'?" asked Mizpah, as we hurriedly launched the canoe.
"He means the Bras d'Or lakes," I said, "those wonderful reaches of land-locked sea that traverse the heart of He Royale. It is a likely enough way for the savages to go. There are villages both of Acadians and of Indians on the island."
As we were to learn afterwards, however, Grûl had told us falsely. The child was not destined for Ile Royale. Whether the strange being really thought he was directing us aright, or, his vanity not permitting him to confess that he did not know, trusted to a guess with the hope that it might prove a prophecy, I have never been able to determine. As a matter of fact, Fate did presently so take our affairs into her own hands, that Grûl's misinformation affected the end not at all. But his warning and his exhortation to speed we had to thank for our escape from the perils that soon came upon us. Had we not been thus warned, without doubt we should have been taken unawares and perished miserably.
On the incidents of our journey for the rest of that day, and up to something past noon of the day following, I need not particularly dwell. Suffice to say that we accomplished prodigious things, and that Mizpah showed incredible endurance. It was as if she saw her child ever a little way before her, and hoped to come up with him the next minute. When the stream became hopelessly shallow, we got out and waded, dragging the canoe. The long portage to the head of the Pictook waters we made in the night, the trail being a clear one, and not overly rough. At the further end of the carry, when I set down the canoe at the stream's edge, I could have dropped for weariness, yet from Mizpah I heard no complaint; and her silent heroism stirred my soul to a deepening passion of worship. Over and over I told myself that night that I would never rest or count the cost till I had given the child back to her arms.
Not till we had gone perhaps a mile down the Pictook did I order a halt, thrusting the canoe into a secure hiding-place. We snatched an hour of sleep, lying where we stepped ashore. Then, rising in the redness of daybreak, we hurried on, eating as we journeyed. And now, conceiving that it was necessary to keep up her strength, Mizpah ate of the uncooked bacon; though she wore a face of great aversion as she did so.
When, after hours of unmitigated toil, we reached the head of tide and the spacious open reaches of the lower river, I insisted on an hour of rest. Mizpah vowed that she was not exhausted,—but she slept instantly, falling by the side of the canoe as she stepped out. For myself I durst not sleep, but I rested, and watched, and sucked an egg, and chewed strips of bacon. When we pushed off again I felt that we must have put a good space between us and our pursuers; and as the ebb tide was helping me I made Mizpah go on sleeping, in her place in the bow.