They started out together on the trail the Indians had taken, Vytal telling briefly of St. Magil’s approach, and Rouse listening with more of satisfaction than alarm. At length, after a long walk, they heard the familiar notes of a flute gone wild, and pushing forward to an opening in the woods that bordered on the water, came within view of a scene that is wellnigh indescribable.
There, in the middle of the glade, sat Roger Prat on his tabor, piping for dear life, while Gyll Croyden flashed in and out amid the shadows in a dance even more fast and furious than the tune. But this was not all; for there, in ludicrous contrast, stood King Lud, the bear, facing her from across the sward, erect on his hind-legs and curveting clumsily about. His nose sniffed the air; his fore-paws dangled idly on his shaggy breast; but the bandy hind-legs danced with an awkward alacrity, while he shambled hither and thither as though on a red-hot iron. Again and again he revolved slowly in a cumbrous, rotary jump, maintaining his equilibrium with the utmost effort of ponderous energy. And still the flutist played his rollicking tune, the romp of the notes accompanying occasional outbursts of musical laughter and warbled catches from Mistress Croyden’s lips.
Mistress Croyden herself was undeniably the life and key-note of the extravagant orgie, dancing, and dancing as only impulse led her, in utter abandon and unrestrainable liberty of motion, until her little feet sped to no tune, but outstripped Prat’s endeavors—madly, riotously leaped, tripped, pirouetted, glided, and were never still. She whirled first, then ran forward as though on wings, then, bending low in mock courtesy to her bulky partner, receded as if to vanish in the air. Her curls, tumbling about her shoulders, shone like gold in the sun’s last rays; her velvet cap had fallen to the ground as though it, with decorum, had been thrown wildly to the winds.
She had not seen Vytal and Rouse, who held back within the wood, but the sight of a long row of dusky faces looking at her wonderingly from the water’s margin seemed only to increase the madness of her dance. The Indians stood near their canoes, spellbound before departing. Indeed, they could not depart until this preterhuman apparition, with its phantom bear and spirit of a woman, had dissolved, as it surely must, like a dream.
Suddenly, obeying some new whim, Roger slackened the speed of his Pan-like music and subdued the strains to a more pensive melody. In perfect accord with the change, Gyll Croyden fell to a slower motion, a dance no more definite, but only less eccentric and vivacious. With a sensuous, mystical step she seemed to sway and flow into the heart of a new song that her bird’s voice lilted softly, and she looked no longer at the bear. As if resenting this new indifference, King Lud fell to his natural position with a growl, and, returning to Roger, sat disconsolate at the player’s side. Then Gyll sank down breathless near him and used the shaggy shoulder as a cushion for support, her curls shining against the rough background of his coat, her song dying in a laugh.
She had no fear of the brute, for through all those days when his master had been unexpectedly absent on the fly-boat, she and she alone had ventured to attend King Lud, coaxing and scolding him into a condition of amity and servitude. As the pipe, with a wailing finale, became silent, Vytal and Rouse stepped into the opening.
Instantly Roger Prat, a somewhat sheepish trepidity in his bulging eyes, jumped up from the tabor, and, thrusting the pipe with an obvious attempt at concealment into his belt, bowed low before them. “Thus,” he ventured, waving his fat hand at the dark figures on the water’s edge—“thus we tame the redskins.”
“And a king,” added Gyll Croyden, stroking the bear’s nose with delicate fingers. She was looking down at King Lud, for somehow her laughing eyes persisted in avoiding the face of Vytal. Yet they were by no means bashful.
Rouse looked down at Prat. “Vagabond,” he muttered, under his heavy mustache, “Bubble-wit!”
But Roger only turned on the big soldier a glance of mimic scorn and commiseration, mumbling some retort, in which “Ox” and “Blunderbuss” were alone intelligible.