Basil called upon his last ounce of reserve strength to meet the emergency. Brochet muttered as if in prayer while the leaden-backed surges lipped across the gunwales and the spume slashed across the bow. But grim as the storm-wraiths themselves Dunvegan held to his course, wet drops glistening on his cheeks, wind furies reflected from his eyes. By sunset they made the other shore, their craft ready to sink under water which could not be bailed out fast enough.
Tired to the bone, their sleeping camp was as the camp of the dead that night. An owl hooted on the tent boughs. A big moose splashed in the shallows. A gray timber wolf growled over its kill on the shore. But nothing quickened their dulled ears till dawn, red-eyed from his yesterday revelry, stared through the spruce tops.
Then like the revolving of a treadmill came hours of monotonous straight-water paddling, intervals of tracking and snubbing, occasional poling through cross-currents, swift, transient moments of hazardous rapid-running, and the hateful, staggering grind of slippery portages.
Across the Nisgowan; across the Wakibogan; across the Koo-wai-chew! Through Wenokona, through Burnt Lake, through Lake of Stars! At Little Hayes Rapid, a half-day's paddle from Fort La Roche, came their first mishap. To Basil Dreaulond as bowsman the passage which he had often run seemed unfamiliar.
"I'm not be know dis, me," he cried as the canoe swung for a second in the head-swirls before taking the meteor-like plunge downwards.
"You're joking," called the chief trader. His paddle urged. The craft shot forward.
"Non, ba gosh! Dat rock she be split wit' de frost an' de ice——" and his voice went up in an alarmed yell.
"Diable!" he roared. "Undaire de nose!"
A desperate thrust of his blade, a tremendous straining did not avail to clear them. The canoe bow struck a fang of submerged rock with a horrible, ripping sound. On the instant they capsized.
His lungs full of water and twin mill-races booming in his ears, Father Brochet hung limply under Bruce Dunvegan's arm as the latter struggled up the bouldered side of the shallow channel. It was the most realistic drowning sensation that he ever wished to experience. After them crawled the bedraggled courier, hauling the gashed canoe beyond the hammering eddies. Blood flowed over his temple. The battering he had received had re-opened the wound in his head.