But it filled him with inward tremors to know
that if she chose to leave the usual haunts of navigation on her left,
and steam out over the submerged prairies and the lake, and into the
very shadow of these cypresses, she could do it without fear of a snag
or a shallow. He watched anxiously as the faint smoke reached a
certain point. If the next thin curl should rise farther on, it would
mean safety. But when it came it seemed to be in the same place as the
last; and another the same, and yet another the same: she was making
almost a straight line for the spot where he stood. Only a small low
point of forest broke the line, and presently, far away, she slowly
came out from behind it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TORNADO.

The Acadian stooped at once and with a quick splash launched his
canoe. A minute later he was in it, gliding along and just within the
edge of the forest where it swept around nearly at right angles to the
direction in which the steamboat was coming. Thus he could watch the
approaching steamer unseen, while every moment putting distance
between himself and the lugger.

The strange visitor came on. How many men there were on her lower
deck! Were they really negroes, or had they blackened their faces, as
men sometimes do when they are going to hang a poor devil in the
woods? On the upper deck are two others whose faces do not seem to be
blackened. But a moment later they are the most fearful sight of all;
for only too plainly does the fugitive see that they are the same two
men who stood before the doorway of his hut six days before. And see
how many canoes on the lower deck!

While the steamer is yet half a mile away from the hidden lugger, her
lamps and fires and their attendant images in the water beneath glow
softly in the fast deepening twilight, and the night comes swiftly
down. The air is motionless. Across the silent waste an engine bell
jangles; the puff of steam ceases; the one plashing paddle-wheel at
the stern is still; the lights glide more and more slowly; with a
great crash and rumble, that is answered by the echoing woods, the
anchor-chain runs out its short measure, and the steamer stops.

Gently the pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, and the pirogue moved
back towards the lugger. It may be that the flood was at last numbing
his fear, as it had so soon done that of all the brute-life around
him; it was in his mind to do something calling for more courage than
he had ever before co