So, if he took the "Lass" into Hudson's Bay as he intended, and brought us safely to one of the Adventurers' posts, he would have little chance or none of getting away free himself.
Of all on board, I think that only Ruth and I understood this—save, mayhap, Gib o' Clarclach, of whom now we saw nothing at all. In the days that followed our talk with Radisson, I had no chance for another spare hour with Ruth. The illness had seized upon the crew until we were were very shorthanded, and with those of our party who were able, I took place with the sailors at the ropes. There were but half a dozen of us all left untouched, and a few days later poor Maisie Graham died.
Her funeral was a gloomy enough matter, for my father, looking like some great gaunt specter, took the place of old Alec and afterwards staggered back to his bed again. Ruth and those others of the women who could, tended the sick. At morn and eve we gathered beside Alec and it was a fearsome thing to hear the words of prayer come from those blackened, disease-scarred lips. Yet those days of terror made a man out of me who had been a boy, and but for them I had never had the faith and courage to meet what came after.
So we drove east and south through the ice, great mountains of it all about us, trusting everything to the old man who led us on. Then one day there came a blue haze on the horizon, and a feeble yell of joy went up from the men. I looked to see Radisson turn us in toward the land, but he shook his head to my questions.
"Nay, lad, that is but a barren ice-bound coast. We must on into the bay itself and there, please God, we shall find peace."
But the news that we were come to the New World at last was wondrous heartening to our sick, notwithstanding that two of the men died that same day. The leak had gained greatly upon us, and the next morning I felt signs of the illness for the first time. Ruth had not been touched by it, and of the men only Gib, Radisson, and one or two others had escaped. But all the women, poor folk, were in their beds.
Then we came to the great cliffs, stern and icy. A day later a gale came down from the north and drove us onward into the bay; and although this increased the labor at the pumps, yet we welcomed it, since it but sent us the faster toward safety. And at length, as I came on deck at sunrise to take up my watch, I heard a hoarse shout from the weary men, and looking across the floating ice at the dark shore, saw a break of green that we had come to in the night.
CHAPTER VII.
GRIM HOWLS.
It was an inhospitable shore, seen through the shreds of mist that were driving in on us, but never was a heartier prayer of thanks sent up than that which rose from the "Lass" when the news had spread. The wind was falling and a fog setting in, so that we were long in making the shore, which seemed deserted. Not a curl of smoke went upward from all its length.