Jules heard voices again; he crouched at the water’s edge and looked out along the rippling surface: the canoes were coming back in single file, passing close along the bushes. He crept away from the water and lay flat behind a heap of last year’s leaves. He could see the lake fringe plainly; soon the bow of the first canoe came within range of his eyes; it moved evenly and steadily, then Le Pendu’s figure, kneeling in the stern and paddling silently, showed dark. Jules could see him watching, first the mouth of the stream, then the woods. Le Pendu passed and the other four, and they were gone noiselessly. Verbaux kept still for some time. The sun set rayonning in the west, while the purples and gold of its good-night intensified, then paled and melted away. The little wind, too, sank, and the summer twilight was soft and mysterious; the twinkling points of night appeared one by one, and the moon gleamed in its blue-white strength.
“Ah go, mabbe!” Jules whispered to himself, and cautiously worked his way to the canoe. He reached it and listened: the tiny noises of the night, the shrill _bzzzing_ of mosquitoes, the distant murmur of the fast water, were all that broke the lonely silence. With a heave and a few quick steps Jules slid his little canoe in the black waters, sat himself quietly on its ribbed bottom, and started to push out from the shadows of the trees. A long black something appeared out in front of him, moving very slowly. A branch caught on the thwart of his canoe, it grated, creaked a little, then snapped back, swishing. Jules sat still, his paddle holding the bottom. The something beyond stopped its motion; then it swung inshore and came toward him without a sound.
“Maintenant mak’ fight!” Jules thought, and felt under his shirt for his knife, found it, put it between his teeth, and sat waiting. The something grew into the shape of a canoe with a man. It came on slowly; then the man stopped paddling, and Jules pictured him listening. Nearer and nearer drifted the canoe; only the _drip-drip-drip_ of the drops from the oncoming paddle-blade that rested across the canoe. Right up to the bow of Jules’s craft it came, then the man backed water, seeing the woods ahead of him, and his canoe was motionless while he listened, five feet from Verbaux. Everything became still, it seemed to Jules; even the insects ceased humming; his heart-beats were heavy, a surely audible sound he thought, as he gripped the knife closer with his teeth. He could see the man perfectly now: Le Pendu it was; the cold moonlight brought his figure into clear relief with the dark background. Le Pendu sat there listening, scanning the woods.