eater pleasure.

"I've half a mind to do it," hesitates Ben, looking doubtfully at us.

"To be sure," urges M. Radisson, "come along and have a Christmas with
our merry blades!"

"Why, then, by the Lord, I will!" decides Gillam. "That is," he added,
"if you'll send the marquis and his man, there, back to my fort as
hostages."

M. Radisson twirled his mustaches thoughtfully, gave the marquis the
same instructions in French as he had given us when we were left in the
New Englander's fort, and turning with a calm face to Ben, bade him get
into our canoe.

But when we launched out M. Radisson headed the craft up-stream in the
wrong direction, whither we paddled till nightfall. It was cold enough
in all conscience to afford Ben Gillam excuse for tipping a flask from
his jacket-pouch to his teeth every minute or two; but when we were
rested and ready to launch again, the young captain's brain was so
befuddled that he scarce knew whether he were in Boston or on Hudson
Bay.

This time we headed straight down-stream, Ben nodding and dozing from
his place in the middle, M. Radisson, La Chesnaye, and I poling hard to
keep the drift-ice off. We avoided the New Englander's fort by going
on the other side of the island, and when we shot past Governor
Brigdar's stockades with the lights of the Prince Rupert blinking
through the dark, Ben was fast asleep.

And all the while the winds were piping overhead with a roar as from
the wings of the great storm bird which broods over all that northland.
Then the blore of the trumpeting wind was answered by a counter fugue
from the sea, with a roll and pound of breakers across the sand of the
traverse. Carried by the swift current, we had shot into the bay. It
was morning, but the black of night had given place to the white
darkness of northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an
idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's
figure loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of tumbling waves
came the grinding as of an earthquake.

"We are lost! We are lost!" shrieked Gillam in panic, cowering back to
the stern. "The storm's drifted down polar ice from the north and
we're caught! We're caught!" he cried.

He sprang to his feet as if to leap into that white waste of seething
ice foam. 'Twas the frenzy of terror, which oft seizes men adrift on
ice. In another moment he would have swamped us under the pitching
crest of a mountain sea. But M