Wallace seemed surprised at the presence of a humble Company hunter as a member of the priest's family, but Père Breton privately informed him that Jean was as a son and brother at the Mission.
While the black eyes of Julie flashed in response to the admiring glances of Wallace, Jean Marcel ate in silence his last meal at Whale River for many a long week, torn by his longing for the dog carried down the coast in the canoe of the thieves and by the hopelessness of his love for this girl who was manifestly thrilling to the compliments of a man who knew the world of men and cities, who had seen many women, yet found this rose of the north fair. But as he ate in silence, the young Frenchman made a vow that should this man, who was taking her from him, treat her innocence lightly, Inspector though he was, he should feel the cold steel of the knife of Jean Marcel.
After the meal, as Jean prepared to leave, Père Breton renewed his protests against the trip, but in vain. If he had luck, Marcel insisted, he could beat the "freeze-up" home; if not, he would travel up the coast, later, on the ice, or—well, it did not much matter what became of Jean Marcel.
So, with the letter of the factor, on which he could draw supplies at the southern posts, Jean Marcel shook the hands of his friends and, sliding his canoe into the ebb tide, started south as the dying sun gilded the flat Bay to the west. He waved his hand in farewell to the group of Company men on the shore, when he saw above them the figures of Julie Breton and the priest. As Julie held aloft something white, she and her brother were joined by a man. It was Inspector Wallace. Jean swung his paddle to and fro, in response to Julie's Godspeed, then dropping to his knees, drove the craft swiftly down-stream on the long pursuit which might take him four hundred miles down the coast to the white-waters of the great Rupert and beyond, he knew not where. And with him he carried the thought that Julie, his Julie, would daily, for a week, see this great man of the Company. It was a heavy heart that Marcel that night took down to the sea.
With the vision of Fleur, strangely sensing the impending separation from her master, as her wail of despair rose from the stockade the night he left her to go north, constantly before his eyes, Jean Marcel reached the coast and turned south. The thought of his puppy muzzled and bound in the canoe two days ahead of him lent power to every lunge of his paddle. While the knowledge that, back at Whale River, instead of walking the river shore in the long twilight with Jean Marcel, as he had dreamed, Julie would have Wallace at her side, added to the viciousness of his stroke. The sea was flat and when at daylight he saw looming ahead the shores of Big Island, he knew he had won a deserved rest, so went ashore, cooked some food and slept.
CHAPTER VII
THE LONG TRAIL TO THE SOUTH COAST
A day's hard paddle past Big Island the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds thrust its bold buttresses far out into the sea toward the White Bear, and Marcel knew that wind here meant days of delay, for no canoe could round this grim headland feared by all voyageurs, except in fair weather. So, after a few hours' sleep, he toiled all day down the coast and at midnight had put the gray cape behind him.