ey had gone perhaps fifty yards when Henry gave a signal to stop and Jim
and Tom rested on their oars. Then they heard a burst of firing behind
them, and a smile of saturnine triumph spread slowly but completely over
the face of Shif'less Sol.

"They're shootin' at the place whar we wuz, an' whar we ain't now," he
whispered to Henry.

"Yes," Henry whispered back, "they haven't found out yet that we've left,
but they are likely to do it pretty soon. I hope now that this fog will
hang on just as thick as it can. Start up again, boys."

"'Twould be funny," whispered Sol, "ef the savages should find us an'
chase us right into the bosoms o' the Spaniards."

"Yes," replied Henry, "and for that reason I think we'd better bend around
a circle and then go up stream. I'll tell Paul to steer that way."

They went on again, creeping through the white darkness; fifty yards or so
at a time, and then a pause to listen. Henry judged that they were about a
half mile from their original anchorage, when the solemn note of an owl
arose, to be answered by a similar note from another point.

"They've discovered our departure," he whispered, "and they're telling it
to each other. I imagine that their war canoes will now come in a kind of
half circle toward the center of the river. They'll guess that we won't
retreat toward the land, because then we might be hemmed in."

"No doubt of it," replied Sol, "and I think we'd better pull off toward
the north now. Mebbe we kin give 'em the slip."

Henry gave the word and Paul steered the boat in the chosen course. The
forest grew thinner, showing that they were approaching the true stream,
but the fog held fast. After a hundred yards or so they stopped again, and
then they distinctly heard the sound of paddles to their right. It was not
a great splash, but they knew it well. Paul, at the tiller, fancied that
he could see the faces of the savages bending over their paddles. They
were eager, he knew, for their prey, and either chance or instinct had
brought them through the white pall in the right course.

The uncertainty, the fog, and the great mysterious river weighed upon
Paul. He wished, for a moment, that the vapors might lift, and then they
could fight their enemies face to face. He glanced at his own comrades and
they had taken on an unearthly look. Their forms became gigantic and
unreal in the white darkness. As Henry leaned forward to listen better
his figure was distorted like that of