"
"If such is the case, we ought not to lie here a minute longer
than is necessary," said Hutter, glancing through the leaves of
his cover, as if he already distrusted the presence of an enemy on
the opposite shore of the narrow and sinuous stream. "It wants but
an hour or so of night, and to move in the dark will be impossible,
without making a noise that would betray us. Did you hear the echo
of a piece in the mountains, half-an-hour since?"
"Yes, old man, and heard the piece itself," answered Hurry, who now
felt the indiscretion of which he had been guilty, "for the last
was fired from my own shoulder."
"I feared it came from the French Indians; still it may put them
on the look-out, and be a means of discovering us. You did wrong
to fire in war-time, unless there was good occasion.
"So I begin to think myself, Uncle Tom; and yet, if a man can't
trust himself to let off his rifle in a wilderness that is a thousand
miles square, lest some inimy should hear it, where's the use in
carrying one?"
Hutter now held a long consultation with his two guests, in which
the parties came to a true understanding of their situation. He
explained the difficulty that would exist in attempting to get
the ark out of so swift and narrow a stream, in the dark, without
making a noise that could not fail to attract Indian ears.
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