wot--no prophet may dare too much!

"He who twiddles his thumbs may gnaw his gums," M. Radisson was wont to
say; and I assure you there was no twiddling of thumbs that morning.
Bare had M. Radisson finished prayers, when he gave sharp command for
Groseillers, his brother-in-law, to look to the building of the
Habitation--as the French called their forts--while he himself would go
up-stream to seek the Indians for trade. Jean and Godefroy and I were
sent to the ship for a birch canoe, which M. Radisson had brought from
Quebec.

Our leader took the bow; Godefroy, the stern; Jean and I, the middle.
A poise of the steel-shod steering pole, we grasped our paddles, a
downward dip, quick followed by Godefroy at the stern, and out shot the
canoe, swift, light, lithe, alert, like a racer to the bit, with a
gurgling of waters below the gunwales, the keel athrob to the swirl of
a turbulent current and a trail of eddies dimpling away on each side.
A sharp breeze sprang up abeam, and M. Radisson ordered a blanket sail
hoisted on the steersman's fishing-pole. But if you think that he
permitted idle paddles because a wind would do the work, you know not
the ways of the great explorer. He bade us ply the faster, till the
canoe sped between earth and sky like an arrow shot on the level. The
shore-line became a blur. Clumps of juniper and pine marched abreast,
halted the length of time an eye could rest, and wheeled away. The
swift current raced to meet us. The canoe jumped to mount the glossy
waves raised by the beam wind. An upward tilt of her prow, and we had
skimmed the swell like a winged thing. And all the while M. Radisson's
eyes were everywhere. Chips whirled past. There were beaver, he said.
Was the water suddenly muddied? Deer had flitted at our approach. Did
a fish rise? M. Radisson predicted otter; and where there were otter
and beaver and deer, there should be Indians.

As for the rest of us, it had gone to our heads.

We were intoxicated with the wine of the rugged, new, free life. Sky
above; wild woods where never foot had trod; air that drew through the
nostrils in thirst-quenching draughts; blood atingle to the laughing
rhythm of the river--what wonder that youth leaped to a fresh life from
the mummified existence of little, old peoples in little, old lands?

We laughed aloud from fulness of life.

Jean laid his paddle athwart, ripped off his buckskin, and smiled back.

"Ramsay feels as if he had r