Living or dead, I must know the truth concerning her, before I felt the slightest consideration for my own preservation.

If I lived, it should be for her sake, not mine.

Plan after plan came to me as I stood there, my face barely raised above the water level, praying for the westering sun to sink beneath the horizon.
Yet all my plans were so vague, so visionary, so filled with difficulties and uncertainties, that at last I had nothing practical outlined beyond a firm determination in some way to reach the Indian camp and there learn what I could of its black secrets.

I wondered whether this rash hare-brained Frenchman would aid or hinder such a purpose; and I glanced aside at him, curious to test the working of his mind in such a time of trial.
"Saint Guise!" he exclaimed, marking my look, but misinterpreting it; "the sun has gone down at last, and there seems a chill in the air where it strikes my wet skin.

It is in my thought to wade ashore, Master Wayland, and seek food for our journey, as I can perceive no savages near at hand." "It will be safer if we wait here another half-hour," I answered, almost inclined to smile at the queer figure he cut, with his long, wet hair hanging down his shoulders.