CHAPTER XVI
A STREAM OF HISTORY
"Good-bye, fellows, wish you all kinds of luck! I won't be long behind you."
"Good-bye," answered the four from the boat that glided out on the swift waters of Thirty-Mile River. In the bow stood Hugh Spencer, bandaged; at the oars were Bruce and Frank Corte; in the stern John Berwick, pale and weak from his late fever, was resting. A new light shone in his eyes; the lines of his face were softened. Anxieties which had been as a weight on his soul had been removed by that revealing walk, which had ended in catastrophe.
He had been found by the side of the trail some few hours after he had fallen in delirium. The legs of his trousers were worn at the knees; his flesh was cut through his struggling after he had fallen. His finger-tips were worn to the quick; his blood had stained the ice.
The doctor, returning, had been John's rescuer, and had placed him on the sleigh. Truly a good Samaritan, he had returned with the invalid to the foot of Le Berge.
Berwick's delirium was the climax of half-a-dozen years of mental strain. His old struggle as to whether he should make his vocation in the Church, as well as his almost hopeless passion for Alice Peel, had, though even George Bruce barely suspected it, wrought upon him. Now the climax had come; and was passed.
George, seeing this catastrophe, had guessed much; the doctor, trained in the study of humanity, had also guessed something. Hugh, Frank Corte, and Haskins only knew that John had played-out on the trail.
Spencer had told his companions there was nothing much in the first six miles of the river, but that afterwards "she is swift and crooked." Sunken boulders were the chief danger, so he took his post in the bow to "read" the water ahead, and to direct the course, saying "Frank" or "George"—as he wished the one or the other to pull the harder.