Page:The Conquest.djvu/229

 n the party, clinging to the gunwales, heard only his own voice in the wind, crying aloud to heaven, "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"

"De rudder!" roared Cruzatte. "Seize de rudder instanter and do de duty, or I shoot you!"

Fear of Cruzatte's gun overcame fear of drowning. Charboneau, pallid and trembling, reached for the flying rope. Half a minute the boat lay on the wave, then turned up full of water.

At last, holding the brace of the square sail, Charboneau pulled the boat round, while all hands fell to bailing out the water. But all the papers, medicine, and instruments were wet.

Cruzatte alone was calm, and Sacajawea, who, with her baby and herself to save, still managed to catch and preserve most of the light articles that were floating overboard.

Captain Lewis, watching the disaster from afar, had almost leaped into the water to save his precious papers, but was restrained by the reflection that by such rashness he might forfeit his life.

Two days were lost in unpacking and drying the stores.

At midnight a buffalo ran into the sleeping camp.

"Hey! hey! hey!" shouted the guard, firing on the run and waving his arms. But the distracted beast, plunging close to the heads of the sleeping men, headed directly toward the leather tent.

Suddenly up before his nose danced the little Indian dog, and the buffalo was turned back into the night just as the whole camp jumped to arms in expectation of an attack of the Sioux.

"Fire! Fire!" was the next alarm.

In the high wind of the night one of the fires had communicated itself to a dead cottonwood overhanging the camp. Fanned by the gale the flames shot up the trunk, and burning limbs and twigs flew in a shower upon the leather tent.

"Fire! fire! fire!" again came the quick, sharp cry.

Every man rolled out of his mackinaw. The occupants of the lodge were soon aroused. S