e, and to prevent her making any other
sound than a sort of gurgling, suffocating noise. The Serpent passed his
arm round the waist of his mistress and dashed through the bushes with
her, on the north side of the point. Here he immediately turned along
the beach and ran towards the canoe. A more direct course could have
been taken, but it might have led to a discovery of the place of
embarking.

Deerslayer kept playing on the throat of the old woman like the keys of
an organ, occasionally allowing her to breathe, and then compressing
his fingers again nearly to strangling. The brief intervals for breath,
however, were well improved, and the hag succeeded in letting out a
screech or two that served to alarm the camp. The tramp of the warriors,
as they sprang from the fire, was plainly audible, and at the next
moment three or four of them appeared on the top of the ridge, drawn
against the background of light, resembling the dim shadows of the
phantasmagoria. It was now quite time for the hunter to retreat.
Tripping up the heels of his captive, and giving her throat a parting
squeeze, quite as much in resentment at her indomitable efforts to sound
the alarm as from any policy, he left her on her back, and moved towards
the bushes, his rifle at a poise, and his head over his shoulders, like
a lion at bay.

Chapter XVII.

"There, ye wise saints, behold your light, your star,
Ye would be dupes and victims and ye are.
Is it enough? or, must I, while a thrill
Lives in your sapient bosoms, cheat you still?"

Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh, "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan"

The fire, the canoe, and the spring, near which Deerslayer commenced his
retreat, would have stood in the angles of a triangle of tolerably equal
sides. The distance from the fire to the boat was a little less than the
distance from the fire to the spring, while the distance from the spring
to the boat was about equal to that between the two points first named.
This, however, was in straight lines, a means of escape to which the
fugitives could not resort. They were obliged to have recourse to
a detour in order to get the cover of the bushes, and to follow the
curvature of the beach. Under these disadvantages, then, the hunter
commenced his retreat, disadvantages that he felt to be so much the
greater from his knowledge of the habits of all Indians, who rarely fail
in cases of sudden alarms, more especially when in the midst of cov