Antoine stammered on, getting more angry each moment; for to a proud old soldier like him nothing was worse than appearing ridiculous. But this was a matter of life and death, and he suppressed his feelings. “’Tis well my young scamps of coureurs des bois cannot see me now,” he thought. “They’d never stop laughing!”
“Look more cheerful, Frenchman!” said the tall half-breed, getting to his feet. “What if you are to die to-morrow; surely death has no terrors for so great a scholar and philosopher! And come, when you are talking to warriors of the Iroquois take off your cap!” Antoine wore his black velvet house-cap, and as the Iroquois spoke he stepped forward and plucked it from the old man’s head.
Antoine had been able to keep down his anger at their laughing, but this was too much for his small stock of patience, which already was sorely tried. He was desperate and reckless, for death was fairly certain under any circumstances, and it might as well come to-night as later.
“Insolent—take that!” he exclaimed, and he struck out savagely.
The tall half-breed, hit squarely between the eyes, went down as if before the blow of a sledge-hammer.
Several of the Indians sprang to their feet and seized the old man. The half-breed got up slowly, half stunned. Antoine waited for his tomahawk to strike the death-blow, but the half-breed did not raise his arm to strike. “Old man,” he said, “if I were like these other braves you would even now be dead; but, as I told you, I am a convert, and the Jesuit teaches that one must not be too quick in anger—especially with the old and foolish. You shall live, at least till to-morrow; give thanks that I, like yourself, am a monk-taught man!”
Soon afterwards the Iroquois arranged themselves to sleep, one of their number being left as a sentinel and guard over their prisoner. Antoine’s hands and ankles were bound, and by the half-breed’s orders he was laid on the boughs near the fire. One by one the Indians, save the guard, fell asleep; but the old Frenchman was too nervous and excited. Finally his attention was arrested by an object that was slowly and noiselessly stealing out from the evergreen thicket. It crept straight towards the Indian sentinel, who lay gazing up at the stars that shone through the tree-tops. Of a sudden there was a quick, stealthy movement and the gleam of a knife: the sentinel’s head sank back, and he lay stretched out, still and motionless.
“A skilful thrust!” thought Antoine. “I never saw a man die so easily.”
The man with the knife crept towards him, and in a moment Antoine felt that the thongs about his ankles and wrists were cut. The man beckoned and stole away; Antoine followed, and then they silently made their way into the thicket—leaving the Indians sleeping in the white starlight, the sentinel looking most peaceful of all.