ear a bullet
whistle either to the right or the left of the mark I have set up."

As Bois-Rose said this, he knelt down behind his coat, ready to fire at
the aspen.

He was not wrong in his conjectures; in a moment, the balls of the
Indians cut the leaves on each side of the coat, but without touching
either of the three companions, who had placed themselves in a line.

"Ah," cried the Canadian, "there are whites who can fight the Indians
with their own weapons; we shall presently have an enemy the less."

And saying this he fired into the aspen, out of which the body of an
Indian was seen to fall, rolling from branch to branch like a fruit
knocked from its stem.

At this feat of the Canadian, the savage howlings resounded with so much
fury, that it required nerves of iron not to shudder at them. Gayferos
himself, whom the firing had not roused, shook off his lethargy and
murmured, in a trembling voice, "Virgen de los Dolores! Would not one
say it was a band of tigers howling in the darkness?--Holy Virgin! have
pity on me!"

"Thank her rather," interrupted the Canadian; "the knaves might deceive
a novice like you, but not an old hunter like me. You have heard the
jackals of an evening in the forest howl and answer each other as though
there were hundreds of them, when there were but three or four. The
Indians imitate the jackals, and I will answer for it there are not more
that a dozen now behind those trees. Ah! if I could but get them to
cross the water, not one of them should return to carry the news of
their disaster."

Then, as if a sudden thought had flashed across his mind, he directed
his companions to lie down on their backs--in which position they were
protected by the trunks of the trees. "We are in safety as long as we
lie thus," said he, "only keep your eye on the tops of the trees; it is
from these only they can reach us. Fire only if you see them climb up,
but otherwise remain motionless. The knaves will not willingly depart
without our scalps, and must make up their minds at last to attack us."

This resolution of the hunter seemed to have been inspired by heaven,
for scarcely had they laid down before a shower of balls and arrows tore
to pieces the border of reeds, and broke the branches behind which they
had been kneeling a minute before. Bois-Rose pulled down his coat and
hat, as though he himself had fallen, and then the most profound silence
reigned in the island, after this appare