that he heard something, and again bade me look
on both sides of the hill.

"Keep quiet till I see," said I; but I never took my gaze from the
green eyes of a great brute to the fore of the gathering pack.

"But I feel them--but I hear them!" shouted Godefroy, in an agony of
terror.

What gain to keep up pretence longer? Still holding the beast back
with no other power than the power of the man's eye over the brute, I
called out the truth to the trader.

"Don't move! Don't speak! Don't cry out! Perhaps we can stare them
back till daylight comes!"

Godefroy held quiet as death. Some subtle power of the man over the
brute puzzled the leader of the pack. He shook his great head with
angry snarls and slunk from side to side to evade the human eye, every
hair of his fur bristling. Then he threw up his jaws and uttered a
long howl, answered by the far cry of the coming pack. Sniffing the
ground, he began circling--closing in--closing in----

Then there was a shout--a groan, a struggle--a rip as of teeth--from
Godefroy's place!

Then with naught but a blazing of comets dropping into an everlasting
dark, with naught but a ship of fire billowing away to the flame of the
northern lights, with naught but the rush of a sea, blinding,
deafening, bearing me to the engulfment of the eternal--I lost
knowledge of this life!

CHAPTER XIX

AFTERWARD

A long shudder, and I had awakened in stifling darkness. Was I dreaming,
or were there voices, English voices, talking about me?

"It was too late! He will die!"

"Draw back the curtain! Give him plenty of air!"

In the daze of a misty dream, M. Picot was there with the foils in his
hands; and Hortense had cried out as she did that night when the button
touched home. A sweet, fresh gust blew across my face with a faint odour
of the pungent flames that used to flicker under the crucibles of the
dispensary. How came I to be lying in Boston Town? Was M. Radisson a
myth? Was the northland a dream?

I tried to rise, but whelming shadows pushed me down; and through the
dark shifted phantom faces.

Now it was M. Radisson quelling mutiny, tossed on plunging ice-drift,
scouring before the hurricane, leaping through red flame over the fort
wall, while wind and sea crooned a chorus like the hum of soldiers
singing and marching to battle. "Storm and cold, man and beast, powers
of darkness and devil--he must fight them all," sang the gale. "Who?"
asked a voic