The White Squaw by Mayne Reid

Author:Mayne Reid [Reid, Mayne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Twenty Three.

The Strayed Canoe.

That night Nelatu left the Indian camp.

Wacora had given him a few hints by which he thought his search for Crookleg might be facilitated.

He had suggested that the negro lay hid within the neighbouring swamp.

This wilderness, difficult to traverse, was of great extent. It was only by a knowledge of its intricate paths that it could be successfully explored.

Nelatu, fully appreciating the difficulty of his undertaking, was more than usually depressed.

This journey through the track of dry timber was easy enough.

On emerging from it he found himself on a broad savanna.

On the other side of which lay the swamp to which Wacora had directed him.

Its gloomy appearance struck a chill to the young chief’s heart.

Could it by any possibility be the place selected by Warren for Sansuta’s concealment?

He almost hoped his search for her in its sombre fastnesses might prove futile.

Its aspect was especially forbidding at the time Nelatu reached it, which was in the early morning.

A heavy fog rose from its dark waters, clinging around the rank vegetation, and veiling the mosses and spectral limbs of the decayed trees.

A foetid breath exhaled from the thick undergrowth, and the air seemed charged with poison.

No note of bird was heard; no bloom of flower seen. Death in life was everywhere apparent!

Carefully, and with the quick natural instinct of his race, Sansuta’s brother struck upon a well-defined trail leading inwardly from the borders of the morass.

Following this with care, he had soon made considerable progress.

The sun rising higher as he advanced, only revealed more clearly the gloomy character of the scene.

The thick mist became dispelled; the verdure, dark but rich, glistened with drops of moisture, and the ghostly moss waved to and fro, stirred by a gentle breeze that had helped to dissipate the fog.

With the bright sky, however, there came a corresponding lightness over the young man’s spirit, and a doubt arose in his mind as to the guilt of his former friend.

“I cannot believe all that he has been accused of. Perhaps he is not guilty of carrying off Sansuta. I always trusted him. Why should he be so evil without a suspicion having crossed my mind that he was so? He has not been seen since she disappeared; but yet Crookleg might be the guilty one. If all I have been told be true, and Warren be the man, he shall bitterly pay for his crime. But I will not believe it until I am convinced ’tis so.”

It will be seen that Nelatu was still a firm friend, ready to doubt even villainy.

Suddenly the trail he was following came to an end.

A deep black lagoon was before his feet.

How to cross it?

Its unrippled bosom showed it to be deep.

Here and there jagged cypress stumps, to which clung drooping parasites, stood out of it.

Nelatu felt that the trail he had followed was purposely terminated at the edge of the lake, doubtless to be discovered on its opposite shore.

How to cross it? That was the question.

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