“Beaten me,” said Lemaire, and rolled into his blankets without another word.
He woke next morning with the touch of clear sunlight on his eyelids. He leaped to his feet silently, without waking Barrett, and as he did so, ice broke and tinkled like glass where the edge of the blankets had lain in a little pool of moisture. The last of the fog was draining in golden smoke from the low, dark hills. He strode to the edge of the water, and stopped, shaking suddenly as if he were cold. Then he went to Barrett, and stooped over him.
“Hullo, Bob, is it morning?” Then, as he saw Lemaire’s face, “My God, what is it?”
Twice Lemaire tried to speak. Then he pointed eastward to three high rocky islands which lay across the water, exactly spaced, like the ruined spans of a great bridge which once had stretched from shore to shore.
“Barrett,” he said huskily, “We entered the Lost Babiche yesterday in the fog, and never knew. Those islands are ten miles down the river on Forbes Lemaire’s map.”
They faced each other in silence, too much moved to speak. Their hands met in a long grip. Then Barrett said suddenly, “Anything else.”
“Yes. It’s freezing hard.”
“But. . . we’ve won, Bob, we’ve won!”
“Not yet,” said the man whose fathers had been bred in the wilderness, and wed to it. “Not yet. It’s still against us.”
But there was no talk now of turning back.