“Guess that’s so, miss,” said the actor. “It is holding up a little. The clouds are breaking. By George! we have a moon—a bit of one!”
“Go now,” said the sternman, as he tilted the canoe to rid it of water.
“Can we risk it? Are you sure?” said Rose.
Carington smiled. He was about to add, gaily, “Miss Lyndsay’s carriage stops the way.” He did say, “All right, ma’am. It rains a mawsel, but the wind’s nigh done. We’d have risked it alone. All ready?”
In a moment they were away, in the power of the great river’s night march to the sea. Never had Rose felt as full a sense of this vast energy of resistless water. Again, as once before, she realized the feeling of being walled in by darkness. Then there came the fierce rush through white water, and things like gray hands tossed up to right and left.
“Look sharp for salmon pillow,” said the Indian.
“Yes, yes!” cried Carington, intent on the stream before him, silent, a little anxious. “Left! left!” he cried. And Rose saw close by, as they fled on, a huge lift of waves, and then again they were away in a more quiet current, and the moon was out and the torn clouds were racing across its steady silver.
“Here’s a paddle, ma’am,” said the bowman. “Try to use it; it will keep you warm.”
“Thanks,” she returned. “What a good idea, Fairfield!” And now in a few moments she was more and more comfortable, and in proportion inclined to talk and reflect. She concluded that the bowman must have been thrown much with gentlemen in the fishing-season. She wondered if, on the whole, it was good for a man in his position to see the easy comfort of camps, the free use of money, and then to fall back into the hardships and exposures of the winter lumbering. The man puzzled her a little as she tried to reconcile him as he at times had appeared with what she knew must be his common existence.
“Is lumbering hard work, Fairfield?” She was now seated so as again to face his back.