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Updated: May 2, 2025
Pausing merely to assure myself that the meeting between Naladi and Madame was outwardly courteous, while De Noyan seemed shamed into silence by the presence of his wife, I began the descent, quickly finding myself in an apartment, rounded in outline, not greatly dissimilar to that other from which I had been so lately rescued.
"To me, not Lafrénière, her father?" "There was a possible chance to save one, not two." "Sacre! yes, I understand that; yet it doth puzzle me why she should have chosen as she did. Know you just why it was De Noyan instead of Lafrénière?" "Madame selected me for action, not advice," I answered shortly, now thoroughly tired of his questioning.
As I slowly unclosed my heavy eyes the huge smouldering log in the centre of the room burst into sudden flame, lighting the interior, casting weird, dancing shadows along the black walls, its red radiance falling upon the face bending above me, and permitting me to look into the dark, troubled eyes of Eloise de Noyan. "There is no necessity for moving," she explained softly.
The boat gave a sudden tremor, and, with a quick, sharp cry of pain, the negro next me leaped into the air, and went plunging overboard. I flung forth a hand in vain effort to grapple his body, yet never touched it, and everything about became black once more. "The poor devil's gone," muttered De Noyan. "The rest of you lay down to your oars, before they have time to load again."
"Do you mean we push on up this river?" broke in De Noyan, who had managed to make something out of our conversation, especially as the Puritan illustrated his knowledge by rudely tracing with a stumped forefinger a map on the board where he sat. "Sacre! 'tis the dirtiest red slough ever I navigated. Why not try the other thing? A brush with those gentlemen below would be more to my taste."
"So I heard, yet that was mostly boys' play; armored men pitted against naked savages. You would discover different foemen among the mountain tribes to the north and east. Do not suppose I question your courage, but I realize the dangers, as you cannot from your town life, while as to Madame de Noyan, she will be safer here with us than with those black brutes in New Orleans."
Let each one speak frankly his thought as to our future course, so we may choose the route aright. De Noyan, you are a soldier, accustomed to places of difficulty and peril. What would you suggest?"
Yet the intense, unanticipated loneliness of that bare hut chilled my blood, and I scarcely recall a more wretched time than while I waited, stung and tortured by fears, for the return of De Noyan. In truth the rough conclusions voiced by the angry sectary merely confirmed my own fear.
The extreme difficulty of our present situation, encompassed and separated as we were: De Noyan was bewitched by a siren who had already bound him by silken cords to any nefarious scheme her unscrupulous desires might compass; Cairnes was as helplessly entangled in her power, although held to his fate by ropes of a different nature; while Madame was scarcely less a prisoner, powerless to escape the ruthless grasp of a false-hearted woman whose jealousy might at any instant lead to measures of extremity.
Still it was difficult to do justice in such a way to so charming a woman; much came to my lips which I hesitated to utter through the medium of that interpreter." I looked at him in speechless amazement at this revelation of his supreme conceit, his reckless vanity. Anxiety alone prompted me to smother my resentment, hoping thus to obtain information. "But your wife, Madame de Noyan?
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