There was a shove, a word, a dip of the paddles, and the canoe shot out to the deeper waters, and none aboard her saw the form of Edmonton Ridgar draw back into the shelter of tangled vines on shore.
“Give me a blade!”
From the rocking bottom Maren was reaching for a paddle, got it, thrust by some one into her hands, and was cleaving water with the best of them, deep stroke after deep stroke, the rush and suck of the eddy in her ears.
In the cold blue darkness the stream whispered and warned like some old witch at her cauldron, the night was clammy, and behind the new fires flared against the towering trees.
A babble of voices told of pursuit,—shouts and gutturals that strung out from the camp all through the gorge and were beginning to flow with the river.
“Only a matter of time,—a little time,” thought Wilson, at the prow, but never a word was uttered in the canoe.
Exerting every atom of strength, calling on all the will-power aboard, they shot forward into the night and the current.
The noise behind increased, as the tones of a bell blown by the wind increase when the wind sets in one's direction.
“Not now!” Maren was saying to herself. “Not now,—when we are so far toward the winning! Not now,—oh, Friend of my heart! why was that price demanded? Holy Mary rest him, that young Marc Dupre—and send deliverance for this—”
Ahead the river swept around a turn. Keeping close to the shore they caught shallow water and cut round into a wider opening.