Waves sweeping in from somewhere down the channel threatened to overturn his fragile craft. He handled it with skill. Great black banks of cloud came rolling across the sky. The darkness was intense; yet he knew his direction. He pressed forward—to what? He could not say.
“If it’s a fight, it will be a good one.” His hands grasped the paddle with a grip of steel. “God is on the side of the fellow who fights for the right. There’s nothing right about men who carry away innocent girls and then demand a reward for their return!”
He was sending the canoe forward with strong, sweeping strokes. Now he judged himself to be halfway across, now two-thirds. His pulse quickened. Had he heard a sound? Some one moving?
A question came suddenly into his mind. He ceased paddling. How should he come upon them? In the canoe? He’d be knocked into the water, first pop. Better to land below, then creep upon them.
“Six inches of moss everywhere. I’ll make no sound.”
He changed his course. The canoe shot away.
He beached his canoe among alder bushes, then, pike pole in hand, crept forward. Holding his breath he parted bushes here, crossed a log there, climbed over a moss-covered boulder, then paused to listen. No sound save the rush of water against rocky shores. Boo! How cold it was! How the clouds raced! Going to snow.
“Should be about there,” he told himself, and his pulse pounded.
Ten more steps on the yielding moss, and again he paused. “Just one or two more trees.” A black old spruce stood before him. “Just one or two, and then—”
But what was that? A voice? Some one humming low? Yes, there it was!