“Nothing to speak of. I thought perhaps the silence and the solitude had got on your nerves a little. It’s that kind of a night.”
“I don’t mind it,” she said; “with you near—and Mary,” she quickly added. “Please go back to bed.”
He crept to her tent. It was purely an involuntary act. He was on his knees, but he did not think of that. “Ah, Clare, if I could only take your trouble from you!” he murmured.
“Hush!” she whispered. “Put me and my troubles out of your head. It is nothing. It is like the rapids; one loses one’s nerve when they loom up ahead. I shall be all right when I am in them.”
“Clare, let me sit here on the ground beside you—not touching you.”
“No—please! Go back to your tent. It will be easier for me.”
In the morning they arose heavily, and set about the business of breakfasting and breaking camp with little speech. Indeed, there was nothing to say. Neither Stonor nor Clare could make believe now to be otherwise than full of dread of what the day had in store. Embarking, Clare took a paddle too, and all three laboured doggedly, careless alike of rough water and smooth.
In the middle of the day they heard, for some minutes before the place itself hove in view, the roar of a rapid greater than any they had passed.
“This will be something!” said Stonor.
But as they swept around the bend above they never saw the rapid, for among the trees on the bank at the beginning of the swift water there stood a little new log shack. That sight struck them like a blow. There was no one visible outside the shack, but the door stood open.