CHAPTER II

THE CAPTIVE

I woke the next morning, saying, “I must keep out of this,” and I knew that I had said it in my slumber.  It is pitiful that a man should be so infirm of will that he need cosset his resolution in this fashion, and I kicked the dogs from the door of my cabin, and went out to meet the world in a bad humor.

It was a still world in the great sky and water spaces, but a noisy one upon the shore.  Early as it was—­the night dusk was still lingering—­the kettles were simmering, and the Indians decked for a holiday.  The sense of approaching action was powder to my nostrils, and added to my spleen; so though I went down upon the beach, and joined Cadillac and his officers, I was but surly company, and soon turned my back upon them, to stare off at the lake.

It was a breezeless morning, and the lake was without ripple.  It lay like one of the metal mirrors that we sell the Indians, a lustreless gray sheet that threw back twisted pictures.  I looked off at the east, and thought of the dull leagues that lay behind me, and the uncounted ones before, and I realized that the morning air was cold, and that I hated the dark, secret water that led through this strange land.  Yet, even as I scowled at it, the disk of the sun climbed over the island’s rim, and laid a shining pathway through the gray,—­a pathway that ended at my feet.

I felt my pulse quicken.  After all, it was a fair world, and the air, though keen, was a cordial.  I let my gaze travel up that shining, glimmering track, and while I looked it was suddenly flecked with canoes.  Long and brown, they swung down toward me like strong-winged birds upheld by the path of the sunrise.

I looked back at the Indians.  They, too, had seen the canoes, but they made no sound of welcome.  Bedizened and wolf-eyed, they stood in formal ranks as attentive as children at a pantomime.  In a moment the canoes took clearer shape, and the shine of the paddles could be seen as the flat of the blades slanted toward the light.  The men at the paddles were indistinguishable, crouching shapes, but their prisoner was standing.  He stood in the foremost canoe, and as his figure was outlined against the sun I saw that he was rigid as a mummy.  I turned to Cadillac.  To see a white man bound!  I could feel the thongs eating into my own flesh.

“They have bound the Englishman!” I protested.  “Let us hope that they are not daring enough—­or crazed enough—­to make him sing to grace their triumph.”

But he laughed at my tone.  “What does it matter?” he shrugged.  “These wards of mine—­my happy family—­must have their fete in their own fashion, or they will ask that I pay the piper.  Well, whatever they do, the prisoner is in our hands, and it will be long before he escapes them.  Yes, listen,—­oh, the play-acting dogs!—­they are making him sing now.”