Yet,
even as I scowled at it, the disk of the sun climbed over the island's
rim, and laid a shining pathway through the gray,--a pathway that ended
at my feet.
I felt my pulse quicken. After all, it was a fair world, and the air,
though keen, was a cordial. I let my gaze travel up that shining,
glimmering track, and while I looked it was suddenly flecked with
canoes. Long and brown, they swung down toward me like strong-winged
birds upheld by the path of the sunrise.
I looked back at the Indians. They, too, had seen the canoes, but they
made no sound of welcome. Bedizened and wolf-eyed, they stood in
formal ranks as attentive as children at a pantomime. In a moment the
canoes took clearer shape, and the shine of the paddles could be seen
as the flat of the blades slanted toward the light. The men at the
paddles were indistinguishable, crouching shapes, but their prisoner
was standing. He stood in the foremost canoe, and as his figure was
outlined against the sun I saw that he was rigid as a mummy. I turned
to Cadillac. To see a white man bound! I could feel the thongs eating
into my own flesh.
"They have bound the Englishman!" I protested. "Let us hope that they
are not daring enough--or crazed enough--to make him sing to grace
their triumph.
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