A few moments brought us to the island, and we rounded the point and came into the cove.  The little camp was awake and startled by my absence.  Pierre was searching the horizon from under a red, hairy hand, and Labarthe was looking to the priming of his arquebus.  Only the woman sat steadfast.  All this I saw at a glance.

I rushed the canoes to the shore, and helped the Indian girl to alight as I would have helped any woman.  I gave one look at the men, and said, “Be still,” and then I led Singing Arrow to the woman.

“Madame,” I said, “here is the Indian girl who befriended you when you were a prisoner.  It was she who passed us last night.  She comes to me with documents from Cadillac, and I have great reason to be grateful to her.  I commend her to you, madame.”

I doubt that the woman heard much of my speech, though I made it earnestly.  She was looking at the Indian girl, and the Indian girl at her.  I should have liked cordiality between them, but I did not expect it.  The woman would do her best, but she would not know how.  I had come to think her gracious by nature, and she would treat this girl with courtesy, but she was a great lady while Singing Arrow was a squaw, and she would remember it.  Yet Singing Arrow, even though she might admit her inferiority to a white man, would think herself the equal of any woman of whatever rank or race.  I could not see how the gulf could be bridged.

But bridged it was, and that oddly.  The woman stood for a moment half smiling, and then suddenly tears gathered in her eyes.  She put out her hand to Singing Arrow, and the Indian took it, and they walked together back into the trees.  They could not understand each other, and I wondered what they would do.  But later I heard them laughing.

Well, the woman was destined to surprise me, and she had done it again.  I had thought her too finely woven and strong of fibre to be easily emotional.  It was some hours before it came to me that she had not been with another woman since the night the savages had found her in the Connecticut farmhouse.  All the world had been a foe to be feared and parried except myself, and I had been a despot.  Perhaps she did not know herself.  Perhaps she would welcome Benjamin Starling after all.  No matter what her horror of him, she could at least be natural with him, if only to show her scorn.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STORM

We embarked in good season that morning and followed the line of the peninsula in its slant to the southwest.  It was a pleasant shore, limestone-scarped and tree-bannered, and we paddled so near to it that the squirrels scolded at us, and a daisy-spotted fawn crashed through the young cedars and stared at us with shy eyes.  The birds were singing and calling like maids in a hayfield, and the woman sat with her back straight and her eyes laughing, and imitated each new note as the breeze brought it to her.  She did it fairly well, but Singing Arrow could have done it better.  In my heart I commended the Indian for sitting silent, for I knew that the vanity of her sex and the inherent boastfulness of her savage blood must both be whispering to her that this was the place to show her superiority.  But she resisted.