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Updated: May 21, 2025
Tandakora said something to the French officers, and they too looked at the island, but the fleeing canoe danced on the crest of a high wave and its call was potent in the souls of white men and red alike. It was still too far away for them to tell that it was empty.
"Hark to that!" exclaimed Robert. A breeze behind them bore a faint shout to his ear. Tayoga listened intently, and it was repeated once. "Pursuit!" he said briefly. "They have come by chance upon our trail. It may be Tandakora himself and it is unfortunate. They will never leave us now, unless they are driven back."
The rustling, one great blended note, universal but soft, was that of the leaves moving in harmony before the gentle wind. The young Onondaga was sure that the forest held no alien presence. The traces of Tandakora were hours old, and he must now be many miles away with his band, and, such being the case, it was fit time for him to choose a camp and call his friends.
"We'll see no more of Tandakora for a long time, at least," he exclaimed, "and now, ho! for our wonderful voyage!" They drew the wet charges from their pistols and reloaded them, they polished anew their hatchets and knives and then, these tasks done, they still sat for a long time in the canoe, idle and content. Their little boat needed no help or guidance from their hands.
His calm tones, and the fearless gaze with which he met that of Tandakora, gave him all the aspect of a prophet. The huge Ojibway flinched for a moment, and then he laughed. "If it is written that I am to die by your hand it is written falsely," he said, "because before another sun has set all chance for it will be gone." "I have said that you will die by my hand, and I say it again.
"More probably it will set them to wondering," replied the hunter, "and they may hesitate. They may think a strong force has come to rescue the garrison and people." "But whatever Tandakora and the officer of Onontio may surmise," said Tayoga, "our own course is plain, and that is to march as fast as we can."
The Chevalier did not change his smooth, placatory tone as he replied: "I cannot give up Lennox. It is true that he was taken by your warriors, but they were then in my service, so he is my prisoner. But he is only a single captive, a lad. Ask for some other and greater reward, Tandakora, and it shall be yours."
"But our lives would be the forfeit," the Onondaga whispered back. "I had no intention of doing it." "Now they have passed us, and for the while we are safe. They will go on up the lake, until they find no trace of us there, and then Tandakora will come back." "But how does he know we have a canoe?"
Their likeness to climbing animals increased, and it would have required keen eyes to have seen the three as they lay along the trunk, deep among the leaves and boughs thirty feet from either shore. Tandakora, De Courcelles and about twenty warriors appeared in the forest, walking a little distance back from the stream, where they could see on the farther bank, and yet not be seen from it.
"De Courcelles might, but Tandakora, who has lived his whole life in the forest, will conclude that the birds are here, unafraid, because we have been so long in the bushes." Time went on very slowly and the forest on either side of the creek was silent, save for the singing of the birds among the bushes in which the defenders lay hidden.
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