I stood for a moment marshaling my wits.  The bright day and the noise confused me, for I had been deep sunk in unconsciousness, and grasped the real world unsteadily.  The camp was even larger than the night had shown, and it took some looking to find the woman’s lodge.  It was empty; the mat was pulled down from before the door.

I should have expected nothing else, for the morning was far advanced, but I felt baffled, belated, like one whose long unconsciousness had carried him hopelessly out of touch with his surroundings.  Most of the Indians were gathered at the shore, and I made my way toward them.  I went but slowly, for I had to feign indifference.  I knew that every step was watched.  Perhaps the woman herself was watching.  I burned with shame to think she should have seen me sleep so soddenly.  I expected every moment to see her in the crowd.

But when I reached the beach the crowd was straying as if the excitement were over.  Far out on the water to the northeast was a flotilla of canoes fast disappearing.  Whom did they carry?  Had they left from the camp?  I cursed myself for my lost hours.  The threads of the situation had slipped from my hand, and all my feeling of competence and hope of the night before had gone with them.  I could see no sign of the woman nor of Starling.  Pierre’s red head was a beacon, but I dared not go to him.  He was bending over a caldron of boiling meat, and I saw that my man was himself again, and that the trencher called him more winningly than any voice of mine.  I shrugged, and went to the beach to make what toilet I could.  The cold water recreated me.  I was more a man when I strolled back in the crowd.

And then I saw Labarthe.  He was unbound and mingling with the Indians.  Leclerc was close beside him, shuffling and docile; he, too, was free, as was Pierre.  Four of us, and our hands at liberty.  This looked better.  I hummed a tune, clapped a brave on the shoulder, and motioned him to bring me meat and meal.  But where was the woman?

I saw Labarthe working toward me with his eyes the other way, so I knew he had news.  He was nimbler witted than Pierre, though less valuable on a long stretch.  I dreaded Leclerc, for he could not be trusted even for good sense, and I heartily wished him elsewhere.  But Pierre came to the rescue; he called Leclerc boldly, and drew him to the meat caldron.  I was satisfied.  Three of us were working in unison,—­and we had worked together in this way before, and won.  But where were Pemaou, and Starling, and the woman?

Labarthe made his way near, and stood with his back toward me.  I remembered a roundelay that we had sung in camp.  I whistled it, picking, in the meantime, at the bone the Indian had brought.  I whistled the tune once, twice, several times.  Then I fitted words to it.

“Where is the woman?  Where is the Englishman?  Tell me.”  I sang the words boldly, but in bastard French with clipped accents.  I feared that among all these Senecas there might be one or more who had some smattering of the French tongue.