en he saw him rush so suddenly
down the ladder, every fear was banished from his mind save the
overpowering one that he was about to lose his precious charge.
He, too, clambered down at the very heels of his prisoner, and rushed
into the stream not ten paces behind him.

And so the watchers at the window saw the strangest of sights.
There, in mid-stream, lay the canoe, with a ring of dark warriors
clustering in the stern, and the two women crouching in the midst of
them. Swimming madly towards them was De Catinat, rising to the
shoulders with the strength of every stroke, and behind him again was
the tonsured head of the friar, with his brown capote and long trailing
gown floating upon the surface of the water behind him. But in his zeal
he had thought too little of his own powers. He was a good swimmer, but
he was weighted and hampered by his unwieldy clothes. Slower and slower
grew his stroke, lower and lower his head, until at last with a great
shriek of _In manus tuas, Domine!_ he threw up his hands, and vanished
in the swirl of the river. A minute later the watchers, hoarse with
screaming to him to return, saw De Catinat pulled aboard the Iroquois
canoe, which was instantly turned and continued its course up the river.

"My God!" cried Amos hoarsely. "They have taken him. He is lost."

"I have seen some strange things in these forty years, but never the
like of that!" said Du Lhut.

The seigneur took a little pinch of snuff from his gold box, and flicked
the wandering grains from his shirt-front with his dainty lace
handkerchief.

"Monsieur de Catinat has acted like a gentleman of France," said he.
"If I could swim now as I did thirty years ago, I should be by his
side."

Du Lhut glanced round him and shook his head. "We are only six now,"
said he. "I fear they are up to some devilry because they are so very
still."

"They are leaving the house!" cried the _censitaire_, who was peeping
through one of the side windows. "What can it mean? Holy Virgin, is it
possible that we are saved? See how they throng through the trees.
They are making for the canoe. Now they are waving their arms and
pointing."

"There is the gray hat of that mongrel devil amongst them," said the
captain. "I would try a shot upon him were it not a waste of powder and
lead."

"I have hit the mark at as long a range," said Amos, pushing his long
brown gun through a chink in the barricade which they had thrown across
the l