Then his companions began to discuss the best means of further progress. With a fresh breeze ahead, Jake advocated poling through the shallows near the beach; and Lisle, with a courtesy which Nasmyth had already noticed, turned toward him when he answered, as if his opinion might be valuable.
“The trouble is that the beach sweeps back off the straight. We’d drive her right up the middle to headwater with the paddle before we’d make two-thirds of the way poling alongshore.”
“It would be a good deal harder work, wouldn’t it?” Nasmyth ventured, and laughed when he saw Lisle’s faint amusement. “I suppose that doesn’t count. It’s not worth mentioning,” he added. “Since you’re anxious to get on, what’s the use of stopping for dinner? After the breakfast I had, I can hold out some time.”
“I want to get through as quickly as I can; that’s why I’m not going to rush you unless it’s necessary,” Lisle answered. “Try to get hold of the fact that a man needs food regularly to keep him in efficient going order.”
“Indisputable,” Nasmyth agreed. “But he can do without it and work for a while. We’ve proved it.”
“Not without paying,” Lisle pointed out. “You can draw upon your reserves, but it takes time and rest to make them good. We may need all ours badly before we’re through.”
There was a grim hint in his last words which Nasmyth found convincing, and when he had rested he helped to prepare the meal. It was a simple one—cold doughy cakes baked in a frying-pan, extraordinarily tough and stringy venison, with a pint-can each of strong green tea. Their sugar had long ago melted and the condensed milk was exhausted.
Afterward, they shoved the canoe out and paddled doggedly into the driving rain and the strong headwind. The spray from the splashing bows blew into their faces, and the broken water checked them badly. Nasmyth’s hands began to blister. To make it worse, there was a raw wound on one of them, the result of a similar day’s toil; and his knees chafed sore against the branches in the craft’s bottom. There was, however, no respite—the moment they slackened their exertions they would drift to lee—and he held on, keeping awkward stroke with Jake, while Lisle swung the balancing paddle astern.
They kept it up for several hours, and then, toward evening, the rain ceased and the clouds rolled aside. A wonderful yellow light shone behind the bordering hills, and the twisted, wind-battered cedars on their crests stood out against it in hard, fretted tracery. The wind dropped; the short, white waves smoothed down; the water, heaving gently, gleamed with a coppery glare, and the paddle blades seemed to splash up liquid fire. Then the shores closed in ahead, and, landing on a shingle beach, they made camp in the mouth of a gap among the hills. Supper was prepared and eaten, and afterward Jake took up his rifle.
“I saw some ducks in the next bay,” he explained.