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Nanking must take some rum and bright cloth to his friends, the chiefs, and make them promise to send no more furs to the English of Chisopecke, but bring them to Head-of-Elk. There we will make a treaty, and Nanking and thee, widow, shall have part of our profits." "Zeer wel!" cried Nanking. "That is very well. But Elsje, may I marry her, too?"
Before Nanking could climb the ladder again, it was sailing through the air, magnificent as a ship, toward its winter pastures on the bay of Chisopecke. "He! Zoo!" exclaimed the soldiers. "Foei! weg!" cried the fishermen. Only three persons said "Ach! helas!" the Widow Cloos, pretty Elsje, and Nanking. "Thy stork is a savage bird!" cried Peter Alrichs.
He walked until long after sun-up, and waded the headwater swamps of Christine Kill, until he saw before him the hills of Chisopecke rise blue and wooded, and there he knew the Minquas kept their fort. But the Minquas had no storks.
"The English on the Chisopecke name it a swan!" Nanking burst into tears. His uncle struck the ground with his schout's staff, swore dreadfully, and shouted to the Widow Cloos: "Sister, thy boy is nothing but a big idiot. Thou hadst better drown him, as I told thee!" Nothing could equal the mortification of Nanking. He thought he would die of grief.
It is a mighty responsibility you have on this errand. Remember Elsje!" Next morning Nanking pushed off in a boat, all alone, from the Head-of-Elk, and rowed under the blue bar of mountain into the Chisopecke, and turned up the creek below the rocky mouth of the great river toward the council-fire retreat of the fierce Susquehannocks.
"It is Chisopecke Bay," cried Nanking gladly, "and there, they say, are storks and plentiful geese. I suppose, when we come to a proper place, these Indians will ask me what I want." The Indians turned down from the bay-view, backward, by another trail, and entered a very rocky glen, where rocks as big as the houses of New Amstel were strewn all over the country-side.
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