With these reflections driving swiftly through my brain, I ran one hand hastily along the thwarts of the boat, seeking to discover if paddles had been provided, or even a sail of any kind.  I touched a coil of rope, a rude oar-blade so broad as to seem unwieldy, a tightly rolled cloth,—­and then my groping fingers rested on the oddest-feeling thing that ever a startled man touched in the dark.  It was God’s mercy I did not cry out from the sudden nervous fit that seized me.  The thing I touched had a round, smooth, creepy feeling of flesh about it, so that I believed I fingered a corpse; until it began to turn slowly under my hand like a huge ball, the loose skin of it twitching yet revealing no human features to my touch.  Saint Andrew! but it frightened me!  I knew not what species of strange animal it might prove to be, nor whence its grip or sting might come.  Yet the odd feeling of it was strangely fascinating,—­I could not let it go; the damp flesh-like skin seemed to cling to my fingers in a horrible sort of magnetism that bound me prisoner, the cold perspiration of terror bursting from every pore, even as my other hand, trembling and unnerved, sought in my shirt for the knife of Little Sauk.

As I gripped the weapon, the thing began to straighten out, coming up in the quick odd jerks with which some snakes uncoil their joints after the torpidity of winter.  My hand, finding naught to grasp, slipped from the smooth round ball, and as it fell touched what seemed an ear, and then a human nose.

“Merciful God! ’t is a man!” I gasped, in astonishment and yet relief, as I closed upon his throat, madly determined to shut off his wind before he could give alarm.

“Cuss the luck!” he gasped hoarsely, and I let go of him, scarcely able to ejaculate in my intense surprise at that familiar voice.

“Burns?  For Heaven’s sake, Burns! can this indeed be you?”

For an instant he did not speak, doubtless as greatly perplexed as I at the strange situation.

“If ye ’re Injun,” he ventured at last gravely, “then I ’m a bloody ghost; but if by any chance ye ’re the lad, Wayland, which yer voice sounds like, then it’s Ol’ Tom Burns as ye ‘re a-maulin’ ’round, which seems ter be yer specialty,—­a-jumpin’ on unoffensive settlers in the dark, an’ a-chokin’ the life outer them.”

The growling tone of his voice was growing querulous, and it was evident that his temper, never quite childlike, had not been greatly improved by his late experiences as an Indian captive.

“But Burns, old friend!” I persisted heartily, my courage returned once more, “it was surely enough to stir any man to violence to encounter such a thing in the dark!  What in Heaven’s name has happened to leave you with such a poll?  What has become of your hair and beard?  Is their loss a part of Indian torture?”

There was a low chuckle in the darkness, as if the old rascal were laughing to himself.