Chapter 16 - Page 2

get
off to her without using a boat. The intense darkness that prevailed
so close in with the forest, too, served as an effectual screen,
and so long as care was had not to make a noise, there was little
or no danger of being detected. All these things Deerslayer pointed
out to Judith, instructing her as to the course she was to follow
in the event of an alarm; for it was thought to the last degree
inexpedient to arouse the sleepers, unless it might be in the
greatest emergency.

"And now, Judith, as we understand one another, it is time the
Sarpent and I had taken to the canoe," the hunter concluded. "The
star has not risen yet, it's true, but it soon must, though none
of us are likely to be any the wiser for it tonight, on account
of the clouds. Howsever, Hist has a ready mind, and she's one of
them that doesn't always need to have a thing afore her, to see it.
I'll warrant you she'll not be either two minutes or two feet out
of the way, unless them jealous vagabonds, the Mingos, have taken
the alarm, and put her as a stool-pigeon to catch us, or have hid
her away, in order to prepare her mind for a Huron instead of a
Mohican husband."

"Deerslayer," interrupted the girl, earnestly; "this is a most
dangerous service; why do you go on it, at all?"

"Anan! - Why you know, gal, we go to bring off Hist, the Sarpent's
betrothed - the maid he means to marry, as soon as we get back to
the tribe."

"That is all right for the Indian - but you do not mean to marry
Hist - you are not betrothed, and why should two risk their lives
and liberties, to do that which one can just as well perform?"

"Ah - now I understand you, Judith - yes, now I begin to take the
idee. You think as Hist is the Sarpent's betrothed, as they call
it, and not mine, it's altogether his affair; and as one man can
paddle a canoe he ought to be left to go after his gal alone! But
you forget this is our ar'n'd here on the lake, and it would not
tell well to forget an ar'n'd just as the pinch came. Then, if
love does count for so much with some people, particularly with
young women, fri'ndship counts for something, too, with other
some. I dares to say, the Delaware can paddle a canoe by himself,
and can bring off Hist by himself, and perhaps he would like that
quite as well, as to have me with him; but he couldn't sarcumvent
sarcumventions, or stir up an ambushment, or fight with the savages,
and get his sweetheart at the same time, as well by himself as if
he had a fri'nd with him to depend on, even if that fri'nd is no
better than myself. No - no - Judith, you wouldn't desert one that
counted on you, at such a moment, and you can't, in reason,