"A candle, Brochet! For Heaven's sake, a candle! It is either his neck or his back. Pray God, his neck!"
The priest's cassock flapped up the ladder and flapped down again. Fearfully he walked with the taper and held it tight; for destruction was all around them, and the trampled powder lay on the floor like meal.
"Careful, Brochet!" warned the chief trader. "This way—this way. Ah! it's his back."
Horrible to view, with his spine doubled back like the broken blade of a jackknife, Black Ferguson was crumpled over a barrel. He looked as if he could never move or speak again, and, placing the candle carefully on a box, Father Brochet knelt hastily beside him.
"Help me, my son," he begged Dunvegan. "Raise him up. Surely he will let me shrive him."
Shrive him! They reckoned without the Nor'wester's steel spirit. He squirmed in their hands. As he saw Dunvegan's face bent over him he snarled like a trapped wolf and uttered a demon-howl.
"La Roche!" he screamed loud enough to ring from ground to blockhouse tower. "La Roche! To me, comrades! To me——"
The chief trader's palm stopped his mouth, but the mischief was done. There arose a roar of trapper shouts and Cree gutturals. The yard thundered with running feet. Brochet rushed to bar the door. Dunvegan grasped Desirée's arm and sprang to the fur-chute.
"Quick!" he ordered. "Put your feet over the rim. Now sit down. Basil has the canoe at the other end!"
He looped the rope around the girl's waist and swiftly lowered her like a bale through the wooden spout. Hands below suddenly eased his burden. The rope jerked twice, Dreaulond's signal that the descent was made, and Dunvegan pulled the hemp up again with feverish haste. The coils writhed and twisted on the floor behind him; the sweat of his climb and exertion ran rivulets on bare arms and forehead.