“O, but you'll kill us if we come back,” replied Bart, splashing round his oar as if turning the boat, which in fact was going swiftly ahead. “No, we won't,” responded the leader, deceived by the apparent simplicity of the reply; “but be quick, or we fire!” “Well, seeing you aint going to hurt us,” said the former, carelessly while at the same time directing, in a whisper, the girl to throw herself close on the bottom of the canoe, he silently, but with all his might, bent himself to the oar. “Why,” said the leader, after a short and doubtful pause, as he peered out in the darkness at the dimly-seen boat--“why, aint the fellow still moving ahead? He is, confound him: fire!” “Let drive, then!” sung out Bart, with the greatest _sang froid_, as he hastily cast himself down in the boat. The next instant several bullets struck the boat, or whistled over it, as the fierce flashings and deafening reports of as many exploding muskets burst from the shore with startling effect on the darkness and silence of night. “I vown! but that an't so bad shooting as might be, in the dark so,” exclaimed Bart, hastily springing up and seizing his oar. “They are more at the business than I thought 'em; and we may as well be a little further off afore they have time to load and fire agin, guess,” he added, suddenly changing the direction of the beat from the course it had been taking, and plying the oar with an energy which showed rather less indifference to his proximity to the hostile marksmen behind him than his words might seem to imply. The tories, in the mean while, who had foolishly all discharged their pieces at once, fell to loading again as fast as was possible for them to do in the dark. But before any of them was ready to fire, the last traces of the fugitive boat had vanished from their view.