Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 2).djvu/274

 Indian artifices not to forsee all the danger of the experiment, knew not well how to combat this sudden resolution. Perhaps there was something in the proposal that suited his own hardy nature, and that secret love of desperate adventure, which had increased with his daily experience, until hazard and danger had become, in some measure necessary to the enjoyment of his existence. Instead of continuing to oppose the scheme of Duncan, his humour suddenly altered, and he lent himself to its execution.

"Come," he said, with a good humoured smile; "the buck that will take to the water must be headed, and not followed! Chingachgook has as many different paints, as the engineer officer's wife, who takes down nature on scraps of paper, making the mountains look like cocks of rusty hay, and placing the blue sky in reach of your hand—the Sagamore can use them too! Seat yourself on the log, and my life on it, he can soon make a natural fool of you, and that, well, to your liking."

Duncan complied, and the Mohican, who