“_Halte, là!_” and the figure of Akbal pushed through the reeds. His gun lay in the hollow of one arm, and from the other hand dangled a silver clasp with which Jean’s hunting-shirt had been fastened, and which he had not missed till this moment. It had been found in the bowery lane near the temple. “Better Akbal than another Natchez bring this back to his French brother,” he went on, with a note of mockery in his voice. “Jan Akbal’s prisoner; no hurt him; to-morrow set free.” Quick as a flash Jean’s gun swung to his shoulder. “Stand aside, Akbal, or I shoot you dead. It must be that or pledge of free passage.” The two stood like duellists with levelled weapons, waiting for the word, with stern faces and flashing eyes. This was not the time nor place to remember old comradeship and the rite of blood-brotherhood which had once been solemnized between them. That rite swore them to an undying amity, as if born of the same mother and they had tasted the red drops hot from each other’s veins in testimony. But all this was forgotten. To Jean, Akbal was the barrier to prevent his saving the garrison. To Akbal, Jean was the agent bent on foiling his people’s revolt from French oppression. But though their fingers touched triggers, they did not press them. Perhaps this hesitation would have lasted but a second. But now Jean heard a whirring noise that disturbed even his tense train of thinking with a cold chill. He dashed his musket butt at something, but it flecked him like a giant whip-lash. A monstrous rattlesnake had fastened its fangs deep in his thigh. Another duellist had stepped to the fore. Akbal saw the snake spring, and was himself almost as swift in leaping the interval. He shook his head as he saw the enormous size of the serpent, which was in the deadliest season of its venom, wriggling with a broken back. “Much bad bite, but try save Jean,” said he, as he helped him across to the larger hummock. Luckily Jean’s canteen was full of brandy, and this he gulped down eagerly, while the Indian cut away the buckskin from his leg. Two needle-point punctures, to be sure, seemed scarcely worth bothering about, but with an apology, “Knife much hurt, but good,” he plunged the keen-edged blade into the flesh, cutting out the envenomed parts, and followed it by applying his lips and sucking at the wound for a full five minutes. “Fine weed sometimes cure snake-bite. Big bush over there,” and he danced across the bubbling marsh to a bog-oak with a thick mass of green at its base. The swollen leg and the pain which gnawed through the drowsiness of the working venom told Akbal that there was no time to be lost. Flint and steel quickly struck fire, and steeping leaves and roots he made hot tea and a poultice. So the Indian nurse fought the terrible poison in the veins of the patient all that afternoon and all the night long in the firefly-lit darkness of that evil swamp.