They both peered forward intently; and the next moment they saw a canoe, containing a single rower, low bending to his oar, shoot by the northern headland with the speed of an arrow, strike obliquely out of the white line of rolling waves into the bay, and make towards the point where they stood.
"Who can it be?" inquired Carvil, after watching a while in silence the slow approach of the obstructed canoe.
"In a minute more we shall see," replied the hunter, bending forward to get a view of the man's face, which, being seen the next moment, he added, with a shout: "Hallo, there, Codman, is that you? Why didn't you crow, to let us know who was coming?"
"Crow?" exclaimed the trapper, driving through the ice to the shore; "did you ever hear a rooster crow in a time like this? There! I am safe, at last," he added, leaping out upon the shore, and glancing back with a dubious shake of the head towards the scene from which he had thus escaped. "Yes, safe now, for all my fright; but I would not be out another hour on that terrible lake for all the beaver in the province of Maine! I started at daylight, got out a mile or two, tolerably, but after that, Heaven only knows how I rode on those wild waves without swamping! But no matter,—I am here."
"But where is Tomah, the Indian?" asked the hunter.
"Tomah!" said Codman, in surprise. "Why, haven't you seen him? He went off three days ago, saying he must return to the settlement, to be training his moose to the sledge, so as to start for Boston with him, the first snow. He said he should leave it with Gaut Gurley to see to his share of the furs. I supposed he would call at one of your camps. But come, move on. I suppose you have a fire at camp, and something to eat; I am frozen to death, and starved to death, besides being more than half-dead from the great scaring I've had; but that's all over now, and I'm keen for breakfast. So troop along back to your camp, I say."
To return to camp, take their cold and comfortless breakfast, and decide on the now hard alternatives of remaining where they were, to await the event of the storm, without provisions, and with their imperfect means of protection from the rigor of the elements, or of starting off through the cumbering snow beneath their feet, and the driving tempest above their heads, with the hope of reaching head-quarters by land, before another night should overtake them, was but the work of half an hour. To remain, with the foretaste of the past and the prospects of the future, was a thought so forbidding that none of them could for a moment entertain it; and to set out to travel by land, with such prospects, over the mountains, by the long, winding route on the eastern side of the lake,—which was the only one left to them, and which could not be less than fifteen miles in extent,—was a scarcely less forbidding alternative. But it must be adopted. So, gathering in their steel traps and iron utensils, they buried them all, except their lightest hatchet, under a log, that they should not be encumbered with more weight than was absolutely necessary; snugly packing up the few peltries they had taken since Gaut Gurley had been round, and putting the scanty remains of their food into their pockets, for a lunch on the way, they set forth on their formidable undertaking.
Led on and guided by the calm and resolute hunter,—who at different times had been over the whole way, and in whose skill and discretion, as a woodsman, for conducting them by the nearest and easiest route, they all had undoubting confidence,—they vigorously made their way onwards through the accumulating snows and natural obstructions of the forest; now threading the thickets of the valleys; now skirting the sides of the hills; now crossing deep ravines; and now climbing high mountains in their toilsome march. And, though the storm seemed to rage more and more fiercely with the advancing hours of the day,—whirling clouds of blinding snow in their faces, hurling the decayed limbs and trunks of the older tenants of the wood to the earth around them, in the fury of its blasts, and rattling and creaking through the colliding branches of the writhing green trees, as it swept over the wilderness,—yet, for all these difficulties of the way and commotions of the elements, they faltered not, but continued to move forward in stern and moody silence, hour after hour, in the footsteps of their indomitable leader, until they reached the extreme eastern point of the lake, where their destination required them to turn round it, in a sharp angle to the west. Here, at the suggestion of their leader, who made the encouraging announcement that the worst half of their journey was accomplished, they made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus far prevented them, from suffering much from the cold, or perceiving its actual intensity. But they had been at rest scarcely long enough to finish their meagre repast, when they were driven from their seats by the chill of the invading element, and were eagerly demanding, as a lesser annoyance, again to be led forward on their journey. The snow by this time had accumulated to the depth of a foot and a half, and still came swiftly sifting down aslant to the earth, without the least sign of abatement; while the wind, which was before a gale, had now risen to a hurricane, causing the smitten earth to tremble and shake under the force of the terrible blasts that went shrieking and howling through the bowed, bending, and twisting forests, where
"The sturdiest birch its strength was feeling,
And pine trees dark and tall
To and fro were madly reeling,
Or dashing headlong in their fall."
But, still undismayed by these manifestations of elemental power around them, or the prospects before them, all terrific and disheartening as they were, and nerved by the consciousness that their only chance of escape from a fearful death depended on their exertions, the bold and hardy woodsmen again started out into the trackless waste, and labored desperately onward, mile after mile, through the impeding snow; sometimes taken to the armpits in its gathering drifts, and sometimes thrown at full length beneath its submerging depths by stepping into some hole or chasm it had concealed from their sight. And thus resolutely did they beat and buffet their rough way through the perplexed and roaring wilderness, and thus stoutly did they bear up against the constantly thickening dangers that environed them during the last part of that dreadful day. But, as night drew on, their strength and spirits began to flag and give way. The cold was increasing in intensity. The tempest howled louder than ever over their heads, and the snow had become so deep and drifted that furlongs became as miles in their progress. And yet, as they supposed, they were miles from their destination. At length, one after another, they faltered and stopped. The strong men quailed at the fate which seemed staring them in the face, and they were on the point of giving up in despair. But hark! that cheery shout which rises above the roaring of the wind, from their more hardy and hopeful leader, who, while all others stopped, had pushed on some thirty rods in advance. It comes again!