"I haven't
heard my people sing any better. And now, since you've done more'n your
share of the work you'd better take Robert's advice and lie down on your
blanket."
Tayoga obeyed, and the three in silence listened to the rushing of the
storm.
CHAPTER IV
THE INTELLIGENT CANOE
Lennox, Willet and Tayoga fell asleep, one by one, and the Onondaga was
the last to close his eyes. Then the three, wrapped in their blankets,
lay in complete darkness on the stone shelf, with the canoe beside them.
They were no more than the point of a pin in the vast wilderness that
stretched unknown thousands of miles from the Hudson to the Pacific,
apparently as lost to the world as the sleepers in a cave ages earlier,
when the whole earth was dark with forest and desert.
Although the storm could not reach them it beat heavily for long hours
while they slept. The sweep of the rain maintained a continuous driving
sound. Boughs cracked and broke beneath it. The waters of the river,
swollen by the floods of tributary creeks and brooks, rose fast, bearing
upon their angry surface the wreckage of trees, but they did not reach
the stone shelf upon which the travelers lay.
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