"You can never do it; you can never do it. It would be a march of
more than twenty miles, and that, too, of tramping over brush and
roots, and through swamps, in the dark; the trail of such a party
would be wide, and we might have to fight our way into the garrison
after all. We will wait for the Mohican."

Such appearing to be the decision of him to whom all, in their
present strait, looked up for counsel, no more was said on the
subject. The whole party now broke up into groups: Arrowhead and
his wife sitting apart under the bushes, conversing in a low tone,
though the man spoke sternly, and the woman answered with the
subdued mildness that marks the degraded condition of a savage's
wife. Pathfinder and Cap occupied one canoe, chatting of their
different adventures by sea and land; while Jasper and Mabel
sat in the other, making greater progress in intimacy in a single
hour than might have been effected under other circumstances in a
twelvemonth. Notwithstanding their situation as regards the enemy,
the time flew by swiftly, and the young people, in particular,
were astonished when Cap informed them how long they had been thus
occupied.

"If one could smoke, Master Pathfinder," observed the old sailor,
"this berth would be snug enough; for, to give the devil his due,
you have got the canoes handsomely landlocked, and into moorings
that would defy a monsoon. The only hardship is the denial of
the pipe."

"The scent of the tobacco would betray us; and where is the use of
taking all these precautions against the Mingo's eyes, if we are