The panther screams, which mingled harshly with the subtler horror of things hissing and splashing in the fetid pools, passed into the dreams of Jean. Copper-colored fiends with serpent heads storming the palisades of Fort Rosalie and shrieking the Natchez war-whoop sank their long curved fangs in the body after the knife had rifled the head. “_Mon père! mon père! sauve mon père!_” he cried, in his agonized nightmare, and then awoke, clutching Akbal’s arm in a sweat of despair. “Jan better now, stronger; no more bad dream,” said Akbal, who recognized signs of coming strength; and indeed when daylight struggled into the swamp the color of the French boy’s face had got back its lusty red. “Come, come, we must hasten to the fort! I am myself once more,” and Jean stumbled to his feet to fall back again with the sore stiffness of his wounded thigh. Then he remembered the meaning of Akbal’s presence with a frown. The comrade-foe dragged the heart out of that look with a word: “Go soon. Akbal no stop Jan now.” He spoke with a proud sadness and submission in his tone. The serpent omen had come from the Sun God--not even that deadly bite could stop the young Frenchman’s return, and he himself had been but the instrument of duty. So he carefully bound the sore leg, and they started across the boggy waste, Jean leaning on his arm and limping with a determined step. It took long to traverse that quaking and slippery road, and the sun climbed up the sky, and Jean became half crazed with anxiety, for his leg would only do so much work, with all the help of a human crutch. At last they emerged from the morass and began to climb the upland, toiling on with the fiercest energy of Jean’s tortured spirit. Hark! that was the sound of cannon from the fort, and then they heard the faint crackling of guns. “Too late!” half shrieked Jean Vidal, and he sank on the ground with the reaction, hopeless, helpless, and his face streaming with tears of rage and grief. Akbal dragged him to a sheltered place under a bank, and leaped like a deer up the hill. He believed in the sign of the Sun God, for the rattlesnake was the totem of the Natchez nation. He did not reason, in his simple, superstitious loyalty, that he could have left Jean to die of the serpent’s bite. He only knew that he had been inspired to cure him. Now he believed that the further mission of salvation had been passed from Jean to him, and the French blood in his veins warmed to the dedication. The lives of the garrison might yet be kept from the tomahawk and the torture stake.