Ten seconds passed, twenty, thirty, then with a whirl like some wild animal yielding to its captor, the raft swung about and shot away down stream.
Plunging forward, leaping rocks, gliding over glassy surfaces of snow, puffing, perspiring, the old man followed.
Now he was down; the cause seemed lost. But in a flash he was up again, clutching at a jagged rock that tore his hand. For a second time he stayed the mad rush of the raft. Then he was on again.
Bobbing from reef to reef, plunging through foam, leaping high above the torrents, the raft went careering on. Twice it all but turned over, and but for the skill of its master would have been crushed by great grinding cakes of ice.
For thirty long minutes the battle lasted; minutes that seemed hours to the aged man. Then with a sigh he guided the raft into a safe eddy of water.
Sinking down upon a hard packed bank of snow, he lay there as if dead. For a long time he lay there, then rising stiffly, made his way down the ledge to drag the raft ashore and unlash the sleds. After this he drew the sleds up the hill one at a time and set them across the blazed trail.
“There!” he sighed. “A good night’s work done, and a neat one. I could not have done it better twenty years ago. ‘Grow old along with me,’” he threw back his hair as if in defiance of raging torrents, “‘The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made—’”
Having delivered this bit of poetical oration to the tune of the booming rapids, he turned to pick his way back over the uncertain trail that led to his strange abode.
Eight hours after she had crept into the luxurious bed in the guest room of the strange lodge, Marian stirred, then half awake, felt the drowsy warmth of wolf-skin rugs. For a moment she lay there and inhaled the drug-like perfume of balsam and listened to the steady breathing of the Eskimo girl beside her. She was about to turn over for another sleep, when, from some cell of her brain where it had been stowed the night before, there came the urge that told her she must make haste.
“Haste! Haste! Haste!” came beating in upon her drowsy senses. It was as if her brain were a radio, and the message was coming from the air.