In the biggest of the canoes, paddled by a picked crew in charge of the headman's eldest son, sat Norah and Archie.
'We're all right now,' said Archie.
This was as long a sentence as he had uttered since the night Dick died; and not the violence of sun and rain beating on her defenceless body, not the uncertainty and monotony of the food supply, not the known and unknown dangers of their position had distressed Norah as much as Archie's impenetrable reserve. He did not sulk or ignore her. He was, she told me, as invariably courteous and considerate as he would have been to a fellow passenger in a railway carriage. And he had saved her life on the day of the squall.
But of what he felt or planned, of regret, fear or hope, he gave no sign.
At first she had sought to bridge the gulf that had opened between them. She tried to hint that she did not hold him answerable for Dick's death: and once she slipped her hand over his. But his quick disengagement from the contact of word or body would have discouraged one less proud than Norah.
'It was as if he was buried along with Dick,' she said, 'and a foot of earth between us.'
Now that it seemed sure that they would reach! their journey's end, dread of the inquiries that must there be met, quickened; each sun that rose through the morning's pale haze of silver and misty blue, to climb across the scorching firmament of gold and azure and decline into the tender green and saffron of a momentary twilight, brought her nearer to officials, cross-examination and all the paraphernalia of justice that women hate and distrust. Each repetition of the crew's monotonous refrain, each stroke of the paddles carried her nearer to ... what?
The day the little fleet of canoes, sprinkled on the face of the great mountain-bound lake like specks of dust slowly rotating in a basin of water, reached the southern shores of the lake, I was again in Abercorn. By now I had settled into my fishing camp. My loads had arrived and Lavater had left Abercorn on a two days' ulendo into the bush to inspect the scene of an alleged infanticide.
But mail day and Mrs. Lavater's invitation to lunch brought me into town. After an excellent meal Mrs. Lavater's admirable black butler was handing us coffee on the verandah. The second nine holes were temporarily eclipsed by Mrs. Mackenzie's extravagance.
'Crêpe de chine and real Mechlin, my dear,' announced my hostess.