"All run in canoe," remarked Ouenwa, pointing up-stream.
"What be this?" asked Tom Bent, limping toward Kingswell with an arrow and a small square of birch bark in his hand. He had found the bark, pinned by the arrow, to the side of one of the wigwams. Kingswell examined it intently, and shook his head.
"Pictures," he said. "I suppose it is a letter of some kind, in which their wise man tells us what he thinks of us."
Ouenwa took the bark and surveyed the roughly sketched figures, with which it was covered, with a scornful twist of his face.
"Wolf," he said, indicating the central figure. "See! Very big! Bear"—he touched another point of the missive and then tapped his own breast—"see bear! Him no big! Wolf eat bear." He laughed shrilly, and shook his head. "No, no," he said. "No, no."
"What be mun jabberin' about?" muttered Tom Bent.
Kingswell explained that the bear stood for Ouenwa's family, and that the wolf was the symbol of the people who had killed his grandfather.
The Pelican continued her voyage before noon, and all day skirted an austere and broken coast. She crossed the mouths of many wide bays, steering for the purple headlands beyond. She rounded many islands and braved intricate channels. Toward evening she rounded a bluffer, grimmer cape than any of the day's experience, and Kingswell, who had just relieved Harding at the tiller, forsook the straight course and headed up the bay. Two hours of brisk sailing brought them to a sheltered roadstead behind an island and just off a wooded cove. They lowered the sail and rowed in close to the beach. They built no fire, and spent the night close to the tide, with their muskets and cutlasses beside them, and the watch changed every two hours.
Three days later the voyagers happened upon a ship. They ran close in to where she lay at anchor, believing her to be English, and did not discover their mistake until the little tub of a brig opened fire from a brass cannonade. The first shot went wide, and the Pelican lay off with a straining sail. The second shot fell short, and that ended the encounter, for the Frenchmen were too busy fishing to get up anchor and give chase.