Kate, fearful of another outburst, laid a restraining hand on her.
"Here's your raft," Jack went on harshly. "All you have to do is to sit on it and keep it in the middle of the river and you'll be at Fort Cheever before dark. After letting the breed go, the least you can do is to let me stay and watch him."
They all cried out against this, even Kate and Vassall, whom Jack thought he could count on a little. They all spoke at once in confused tones of remonstrance and alarm. "What would we do without you? We don't know the river. We can't handle a raft," and so on.
Above all the others Sir Bryson's voice was heard trembling with alarm and anger: "Would you desert us here?"
The word brought the blood surging back into Jack's face. "Desert nothing," he said. "I asked your permission. I do not desert. Get aboard everybody, and hand on the bundles!"
They scrambled at his tone, a good deal like sheep. Jack launched the raft with a great heave of his back, running out into the water, thigh deep. Clambering on board, he picked up a sweep, and brought her around in the current. Sir Bryson and the others stole disconcerted sides glances at his hard and bitter face. There is something very intimidating in the spectacle of a righteous anger pent in a strong breast. The spectator is inclined to duck his head, and wonder where the bolt will fall.
XIV
BEAR'S FLESH AND BERRIES
Jack propelled the raft into the middle of the current, and, taking the sweep aboard, sat down on the end of it with his back to the others, and nursed his anger. They sat or lay on the poles in various uneasy positions. Sir Bryson, who, until the the day before, had probably not been obliged to sit in man's originally intended sitting position for upward of thirty years, felt the indignity keenly.
Every one's nerves were more or less stretched out of tune. Linda, watching Jack's uncompromising back with apprehensive eyes, was exasperated past bearing by her father's fretful complaints.