Many a sleepless hour,
many a night broken by awful dreams, must the sight have cost the boy.
But it determined him to attempt escape at all hazards whenever kind
fortune should put the chance in his way.
And fortune did help him ere long. There was a French trader named
Boileau who came much about the camp. To him Andrew very cautiously made
advances, and succeeded at last in enlisting the man's sympathies. Kerr
confided to the trader his desire to attempt escape, and, none too
willingly at the beginning, Boileau agreed to take the risk of helping.
It was no easy task to lull the suspicions and to evade the watchful eye
of the crafty Indians; but the boy had never, so far, shown any desire
to escape, and he was not now so everlastingly under supervision. In
very bad English on Boileau's part, and in worse French on that of Kerr,
a plan of escape was devised. Early in the day, Boileau, after his usual
habit, was to leave camp in his canoe, ostensibly setting out on an
ordinary trapping expedition. After nightfall, he would return to a
certain rock on the lake shore, and then Kerr was to steal out and
attempt to join him; thereafter, a night's paddling ought to take the
fugitive out of the immediate danger-zone.
The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact,
was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of
the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the
dense gloom of the forest.
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