"Hold on!" he shouted, leaping from his mount.
"Why in blazes!" The mate's impatience flared luridly as he ordered the gang-plank replaced. His heat ignited the smouldering resentment of the passengers, and they, too, exploded.
"We're loaded to the guards now!" yelled one.
"Yeh can't come aboard!" threatened another.
"Haven't yeh got a full passenger list a'ready, Captain?" demanded a blustering, heavy-set man with beetling eyebrows, as he pushed himself angrily through the crowding men to the deck-rail.
"Can't help it if I have, Burroughs," retorted the autocrat of the river-boat. "These troopers are recruits for the North West Mounted Police——"
"The hell yeh say!"
Philip Danvers noted the unfriendly eye, and realized that this burly fellow dominated even the captain.
"Their passage was engaged three months ago," went on the officer.
"It's nothing to me," affirmed Burroughs, reddening in his effort to regain his surface amenity.