But Tayoga never doubted. The silent and invisible warning, like a
modern wireless current, reached him again. Now, he knelt at the very
edge of the shelf, and drew his long hunting knife. He tried to pierce
the darkness with his eyes, and always he looked up the stream in the
direction in which they had come. He strained his ears too to the
utmost, concentrating the full powers of his hearing upon the river, but
the only sounds that reached him were the flowing of the current, the
bubbling of the water at the edges, and its lapping against a tree or
bush torn up by the storm and floating on the surface of the stream.

The Onondaga stepped from the shelf, finding a place for his feet in
crevices below, the water rising almost to his knees, and leaned farther
forward to listen. One hand held firmly to a projection of stone above
and the other clasped the knife.

Tayoga maintained the intense concentration of his faculties, as if he
had drawn them together in an actual physical way, until they bore upon
one point, and he poured so much strength and vitality into them that he
made the darkness thin away before his eyes and he heard noises of the
water that had not come to him before.

A broken bough, a bush and a sapling washed past. Then came a tree, and
deflecting somewhat from the current it floated toward the shelf.
Leaning far over and extending the hand that held the knife, Tayoga
struck. When the blade came back it was red and the young Onondaga
uttered a tremendous war whoop that rang and echoed in the confines of
the stony hollow.

Lennox and Willet sprang to their feet, all sleep driven away at once,