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Show 308 appetite were not indifferent to tllC consolations afforded by a lifo of case and sport, and the charms wllich addressed them in forms so persuasive as those of the damsels of lracana. La Vasseur began to tremble for his command, as he beheld the reluctance of his soldiers to depart. Jle gave the signal hurriedly to Alphonso D'.Erlach, and with another sweet single pressure of tho l1and, he left the lovely Queen to her own melancllOly musiu~s. She followed with her eyes the departing boats till they were clean gone from sight, then buried herself in the deepest thickets when: she might weep in security. Other eyes than hers pursued the retiring barks of the Frenchmen, with quite as much anxiety i and long after she had ceased to see them. On a little headland jutting out upon the river ~Jo,v, in the shade of innumerable vines and flowers, crouching ln suspenso, was the renegade, Louis Bourdon. By }1is side sat the dusky damsel who had beguiled him from his duties. While lJis comrades danced, ho was flying through tho thickets. The nation were, many of them, conscious of his flight; but they held his offence to be venial, and they encouraged him to proceed. TlJCy lent him help iu crossing the river, at a poiut below; tho fatlwr of tho woUJan with whom he fled providing tho cnnoc with w!Jich to transport llirn beyond the d:mger of pursuit Little did our FrenclmlCn, as the boats descended, dream who watched them fJOm the headland beneath which they passed. Many were tho doubts, frequent the changes, in tho feelings of the capricious renegade, as he saw his countrymen approaching him, and felt that he might soon be separated from. them and home forever, by the ocean walls of the Atlantic. Whether it was that his Indian beauty detected in his face the fluctuations of his thoughts, and feared that,on the near approach of the boal..9, he would chaltgo 309 Lis purpooo and abandon her for his people, cannot be said i but just then she wound herself about within !Jill arms, and lool:od up in Lis face, while her falling hair enmeshed his hands, anti contributed, pcrhnps, still more firmly to ensnare llis affections. Jfis heart had been in Lis mouth; he could scarcely lm\·c kept from crying out to his comrades a.s the boats drew nigh to the cliff; but the dusky beauties beneath his g-aze, the soft and delicate form wilhin Lis embrace, silenced all tho rising sympathies of brotherhood in more rM•ishiug emotions. In a momeut their boats had gone by; in a little while they Lad disappeared from sight, and the anus of the lndinn woman, wrapped about her captive, declnred her delight and rapture in the triumph which she now regnrded as secure. Louis Bourdon little knew hO\v much he bad escaped, in thus becoming a dweller in the Floridian Eden. |