I was prepared for pursuit, but knew that, with Pierre in one canoe and Labarthe in the other, we must be well in advance of it.  Now I purposed to stop and hide.  It is more to my taste to be hound than hare, and I do not like an enemy snapping at my heels.  So I prepared to land.  Once the pursuing canoes had passed us we could take up the chase on our own part and follow at leisure.

I called the word to the other canoe, and then as we swung shoreward I turned to look at the Englishman.  All night I had heard no sound from him, nor glanced his way.  My thoughts of him had been bitter, for he was a sore weight on my hands.  Yet this I knew was unjust, and I was shamed for my own bad temper.  My surliness must have pricked him, as he sat silent through the long hours of dark and cold; and now that the approaching sun was putting me in a better humor, I could see that I had been hard, and I determined to speak to him fairly.

And so I turned, puckering my lips to a smile that did not come easily, for my face was stiff and my spirit sore.  But I might have spared my pains.  The prisoner was asleep.  He lay in a chrysalis of red blanket, his head tipped back on a bundle of sailcloth, his face to the stars.  He was submerged in the deep slumber where the soul deserts the body and travels unknown ways.  Judged by his look of lax muscles and surrender, he had lain that way for hours,—­the hours when I had been punishing him with my averted glance.

I woke him with a hand on his shoulder.

“You slept well,” I accused.

He shivered under my hand and opened his eyes.  It took him an instant to recognize me, but when he did he smiled with relief.  I could not but see that there was something pleasant in his smile.  I saw, too, that sleep had wiped the lines from his face, and given him a touch of color.

“Did I sleep?  Did I really sleep?” he marveled.  “Monsieur, you are very good to me.”

But I was in no holiday humor, so only shrugged, and told him to unload the bales.  He smiled again, nodding, and jumped to the shore with buoyancy that was an affront to our numbed muscles.  But once at work he was as useless as a sailor in a hayfield.  He could lift nothing, and he was hopelessly under foot.  I bade him stand aside, and I prayed for patience.  After all he was young, and had been through great hardship.  I would spare him what I could for a time.

It is depressing to work in a cold dawn on an empty stomach.  Our landing had been made at the mouth of a rivulet, and we followed it till we found a place, some quarter mile inland, that was open enough for a camp.  Here bale by bale we brought the cargo, piling it under trees and covering it with sailcloth.  The canoes we put bottom up in the open, that the sun might dry them.  I left Pierre hidden at the shore to watch the horizon for our pursuers, and the rest of us proceeded to breakfast.