Frona and Corliss clambered on, the canoe between them.
"The Persians lashed their slaves into battle," she remarked, looking back. "I never understood before. Hadn't you better go back after him?"
Corliss kicked him up, whimpering, and forced him to go on in advance. The canoe was an affair of little weight, but its bulk, on the steep rises and sharp turns, taxed their strength. The sun burned down upon them. Its white glare hurt their eyes, the sweat oozed out from every pore, and they panted for breath.
"Oh, Vance, do you know . . ."
"What?" He swept the perspiration from his forehead and flung it from him with a quick flirt of the hand.
"I wish I had eaten more breakfast."
He grunted sympathetically. They had reached the midmost ridge and could see the open river, and beyond, quite clearly, the man and his signal of distress. Below, pastoral in its green quiet, lay Split-up Island. They looked up to the broad bend of the Yukon, smiling lazily, as though it were not capable at any moment of spewing forth a flood of death. At their feet the ice sloped down into a miniature gorge, across which the sun cast a broad shadow.
"Go on, Tommy," Frona bade. "We're half-way over, and there's water down there."
"It's water ye'd be thinkin' on, is it?" he snarled, "and you a-leadin' a buddie to his death!"
"I fear you have done some great sin, Tommy," she said, with a reproving shake of the head, "or else you would not be so afraid of death." She sighed and picked up her end of the canoe. "Well, I suppose it is natural. You do not know how to die—"