circle of the firelight.

It was Tandakora, the Ojibway.




CHAPTER VII

NEW FRANCE


The huge and savage warrior had never looked more malignant. His face
and his bare chest were painted with the most hideous devices, and his
eyes, in the single glance that he cast upon Robert and his comrades,
showed full of black and evil passions. Then, as if they were no longer
present, he stalked to the fire, took up some cooked deer meat that lay
beside it, and, sitting down Turkish fashion like the other Indians,
began to eat, not saying a word to the Frenchmen.

It was the action of a savage of the savages, but Robert, startled at
first by the unexpected appearance of such an enemy, called to his aid
the forest stoicism that he had learned and sat down, calm, outwardly at
least. The initiative was not his now, nor that of his comrades, and he
glanced anxiously at de Courcelles to see how he would take this rude
invasion of his camp. The French colonel looked at Tandakora, then at
Jumonville, and Jumonville looked at him. The two shrugged their
shoulders, and in a flash of intuition he was convinced that they knew
the Ojibway well.