Rolf had been over the road twice; Quonab never before, yet his
nose for water was so good and the sense of rapid and portage was
so strong in the red man, that many times he was the pilot. "This
is the way, because it must be"; "there it is deep because so
narrow"; "that rapid is dangerous, because there is such a
well-beaten portage trail"; "that we can run, because I see it,"
or, "because there is no portage trail," etc. The eighty miles
were covered in three sleeps, and in the mid-moon days of the Red
Moon they landed at the dock in front of Peter Vandam's. If
Quonab had any especial emotions for the occasion, he cloaked
them perfectly under a calm and copper-coloured exterior of
absolute immobility.
Their Albany experiences included a meeting with the governor and
an encounter with a broad and burly river pirate, who, seeing a
lone and peaceable-looking red man, went out of his way to insult
him; and when Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his
recently established relations with the governor's son that saved
him from some very sad results, for there were many loafers
about. But burly Vandam appeared in the nick of time to halt the
small mob with the warning: "Don't you know that's Mr.
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