n
the quarter-deck, his hands firmly secured behind, and his head sunk
upon his chest in sullen despondency. In the increasing gloom in which
objects were now gradually becoming more and more indistinct, it was
impossible for Captain de Haldimar to distinguish his features; but
there was something in the outline of the Indian's form that impressed
him with the conviction he had seen it before. Advancing a pace or two
forward, he pronounced, in an emphatic and audible whisper, the name of
"Oucanasta!"

The Indian gave an involuntary start,--uttered a deep interjectional
"Ugh!"--and, raising his head from his chest, fixed his eye heavily on
the officer.

"Hookynaster!--Hookynaster!" growled Jack Fuller, who had followed to
hear the examination of his immediate captive: "why, your honour, that
jaw-breaking name reminds me as how the chap had a bit of a paper when
I chucked him into the jolly boat, stuck in his girdle. It was covered
over with pencil-marks, as writing like; but all was rubbed out agin,
except some such sort of a name as that."

"Where is it?--what have you done with it?" hastily asked Captain de
Haldimar.

"Here, in my backy-box, your honour. I kept it safe, thinking as how it
might sarve to let us know all about it afterwards."

The sailor now drew from the receptacle just named a dirty piece of
folded paper, deeply impregnated with the perfume of stale and oft
rechewed quids of coarse tobacco; and then, with the air of one
conscious of having "rendered the state some service," hitched up his
trowsers with one hand, while with the other he extended the important
document.

To glance his eye hurriedly over the paper by the light of a dark
lanthorn that had meanwhile been brought upon deck, unclasp his
hunting-knife, and divide the ligatures of the captive, and then warmly
press his liberated hands within his own, were, with Captain de
Haldimar, but the work of a minute.

"Hilloa! which the devil way does the wind blow now?" muttered Fuller,
the leer of self-satisfaction that had hitherto played in his eye
rapidly giving place to an air of seriousness and surprise; an
expression that was not at all diminished by an observation from his
new commander.

"I tell you what it is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't
pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but
I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead
in these here lakes; and may I nev