The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice
under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with
panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound.
I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We
were silent as figures in a mirror. I tapped the Englishman on the
shoulder, and motioned where he should sit in the canoe.

And then, from the timber fringe behind us, came a call. "Singing
Arrow! Singing Arrow! Stop! Stop!"

Sword unsheathed, I dashed across the open space of moonlight toward
the trees. Who called, or why, I did not question. But I must smother
the noise. "Singing Arrow!" the call came again, and the roar of it in
the quiet night made my flesh crawl.

I had not taken two strides into the timber when I saw a man running
toward me. He was still calling. I leaped upon him, winding an arm
about his neck, and covering his mouth. He was a small armful; a
weazened body to have sheltered so great a power of lung.

"Hush! For the Virgin's sake, hush!" I stormed in noisy whispers.
"Father Carheil, is it you? Hush! Hush!" I dropped my hand from his
mouth. "Now speak in whispers," I implored.

The father shook his cassock free from my fingers. My embrace had been
fervid, and his cassock was rumpled, and his scant hair was stringing
wildly from under his skullcap. But shrunken and tumbled as he was, he
was impressive. With some men, if you disarrange their outer habit,
you lower their inner dignity as well. It was not so with Father
Carheil.