y and gayly, with minds that were reasonably
quiet.

The sun dropped low in the heavens, and the trees cast shadows across
the water. The Paspaheghs now began to recount the entertainment they
meant to offer us in the morning. All those tortures that they were
wont to practice with hellish ingenuity they told over, slowly and
tauntingly, watching to see a lip whiten or an eyelid quiver. They
boasted that they would make women of us at the stake. At all events,
they made not women of us beforehand. We laughed as we rowed, and Diccon
whistled to the leaping fish, and the fish-hawk, and the otter lying
along a fallen tree beneath the bank.

The sunset came, and the river lay beneath the colored clouds like
molten gold, with the gaunt forest black upon either hand. From the
lifted paddles the water showered in golden drops. The wind died away,
and with it all noises, and a dank stillness settled upon the flood and
upon the endless forest. We were nearing Uttamussac, and the Indians
rowed quietly, with bent heads and fearful glances; for Okee brooded
over this place, and he might be angry. It grew colder and stiller, but
the light dwelt in the heavens, and was reflected in the bosom of the
river. The trees upon the southern bank were all pines; as if they had
been carved from black stone they stood rigid against the saffron sky.
Presently, back from the shore, there rose before us a few small hills,
treeless, but covered with some low, dark growth. The one that stood
the highest bore upon its crest three black houses shaped like coffins.
Behind them was the deep yellow of the sunset.

An Indian rowing in the second canoe commenced a chant or prayer to
Okee. The notes were low and broken, unutterably wild and melancholy.
One by one his fellows took up the strain; it swelled higher, louder,
and sterner, became a deafening cry, then ceased abruptly, making the
stillness that followed like death itself. Both canoes swung round from
the middle stream and made for the bank. When the boats had slipped from
the stripe of gold into the inky shadow of the pines, the Paspaheghs
began to divest themselves of this or that which they conceived Okee
might desire to possess. One flung into the stream a handful of copper
links, another the chaplet of feathers from his head, a third a bracelet
of blue beads. The werowance drew out the arrows from a gaudily painted
and beaded quiver, stuck them into his belt, and dropped the quiver into
the