"It will prove vantage of sleep for me," grumbled the Chevalier gruffly. "I take it I should have been resting better had I remained with the Dons."
I noticed the sudden uplifting of his wife's face, and seeing a pained expression upon it, I replied: "Such words bespeak little appreciation, Monsieur, of our efforts to pluck you from a fate which has befallen your companions. Surely your work is no harder than that of others, while you have more at issue."
He glanced from her face to mine in apparent surprise, but replied readily: "Those knowing me best, friend Benteen, pay least heed to my words. When I bark I seldom bite, and when I intend biting I waste small time on the bark. But, parbleu! how can I feel life worth living, if it is all toil? There may be those who enjoy such existence, but I discover no pleasure in it. Sacre! I love not hard hands and poor fare, nor will I make pretence of what I do not feel."
We were then two-thirds of the distance between the mainland and the island, in the full sweep of the raging current. It struck us sidelong, with such force as to require all our combined strength to afford the laboring boat headway. Suddenly Eloise startled us with an outcry.
"What is that yonder?" she questioned excitedly, pointing directly up-stream. "It looks the strangest red thing ever I saw on water. I believed it moved but now, as if alive."
Keeping my oar in motion, lest we should drift backward, I made shift to glance across my shoulder in the direction indicated. The river had us completely in its grasp, tossing the light boat in a majestic flood of angry water, whitened by foam, and beaten into waves, where it rounded the rocky edge of the island. Across this tumbling surge streamed the glorious sunlight, gilding each billow into beauty, while in the midst of it, bearing swiftly down toward us, came that strange thing that had so startled Madame. What in the name of nature it might prove to be, I could not hazard--it had the appearance of some queer, shaggy animal, rolled tight into the form of a ball, having fur so radiantly red as to flash and burn in the sunshine. It bobbed crazily about, barely above the surface of the river, like some living creature, while now and then I marked a glimmer of light behind, as if the water was being vigorously churned by some species of swimming apparatus in the monster's tail.
"Stand by with your small sword, De Noyan," I commanded uneasily, "for, hang me if I ever before set eyes on such a creature! Move, quick, and pass me over your oar so you may have both hands free for the onset."