That was all. The hurt thing was at peace.
Now silence fell upon the two men—silence of wondering and slow comprehension. Frontin rose, turned his dark and glittering gaze upon the empty white desert surrounding them; his saturnine, hawk-nosed visage was wrinkled in perplexity. Crawford began to stuff tobacco into his pipe and stared down at the dead man, his wide and heavy-lidded eyes veiled thoughtfully. Frost and bleak winds had darkened the thin lines of nose and cheek and chin since he had left Newfoundland behind him, only to intensify their hard and aggressive determination.
Whence had this man come? No other ships had come through the roaring turmoil of the straits, according to the Eskimos. For weeks the Northstar had been carried back and forth and roundabout in the grip of ice and fog and currents, now out almost to open water, now back in the straits with the drift. Yet the presence of this man showed that some other ship was at hand, and any other ship spelled peril of the utmost to Hal Crawford.
Here in the bitter north, as on the golden main to the south, powder was the only lawgiver. During a generation and more, English, French and Bostonnais had disputed for possession of Hudson’s great bay and its beaver trade. A year previously, the English Company of Adventurers had swept the French from the bay posts; what would happen this year or the next, no man could predict. The Iroquois war whoop had resounded from the dark pines these ten years, meeting at the apex of a great overland triangle the scalp-yell of the Sioux. The heroic Danish colony had perished in mad horror years ago. Freebooters and fur-pirates slipped in through the straits and out again before the ice formed. Here only the fittest could survive; the conquered met with no quarter, whether from man or from nature.
“Queer words, cap’n,” said Frontin reflectively. “He was repeating something that he had previously said. He must have seen our smoke. H’m! Then he would not have shot the bear unless forced to it. He was scouting us, eh? The bear attacked him, they killed each other——”
“Ay,” said Crawford, opening his firebag.
“No quarter, quoth he,” resumed Frontin. “Death of my life! There is nothing in sight, though his ship may be hidden like ours. That name of Moses Deakin—a singular name! Have ye ever heard it before?”
“Ay,” said Crawford again.
Frontin turned and gazed curiously at him, while he fumbled with flint and steel. Presently he had the tinder aglow—and abruptly he pinched it out. A sudden blaze swept into his steel-blue eyes. He hastily thrust away pipe and firebag.
“I have it—quick, now!” he exclaimed sharply. “Two men were out together, even as we are. Moses Deakin left this man, started back to their ship. He’ll have heard the gunshot and will return to see what it means. Back, out of sight! It’s our chance to catch him—and if we catch Moses Deakin we have the best prize on the bay. Back, back! Prime the guns and wait!”