goal was still a full
mile away when a great wave broke over the canoe. Then came another
and another in quick succession, and Shad suddenly found himself cast
into the sea, struggling in the icy waters, hopelessly far from shore.

III

UNGAVA BOB MAKES A RESCUE

Twilight was settling into gloom, and the first faint stars were
struggling to show themselves above the distant line of dark fir and
spruce trees that marked the edge of the forest bordering Eskimo Bay.
Dark cloud patches scudding across the sky, now and again obscured the
face of the rising moon. A brisk northwest breeze was blowing, and
though it was mid-July the air had grown chill with the setting of the
sun.

Ungava Bob, alone in his boat, arose, buttoned his jacket, trimmed
sail, and by force of habit stood with his left hand resting upon the
tiller while he scanned the moonlit waters of the bay before resuming
his seat.

He was a tall, square-shouldered, well-developed lad of seventeen,
straight and lithe as an Indian, with keen, gray-blue eyes, which
seemed ever alert and observant. Exposure to sun and wind had tanned
his naturally fair skin a rich bronze, and his thick, dark-brown hair,
with a tendency to curl up at the ends, where it fell below his cap,
gave his round, full face an appearance of boyish innocence.

He was now homeward bound to Wolf Bight from the Hudson's Bay
Company's post on the north shore, where he had purchased a supply of
steel traps and other equipment preparatory to his next winter's
campaign upon the trapping trails of the far interior wilderness; for
Bob Gray, though but seventeen years of age, was already an
experienced hunter and trapper.

Suddenly, as he looked over the troubled sea, a small black object
rising upon the crest of a wave far to leeward caught his eye. The
small black object was Shad's canoe, and one with less keen vision
might have passed it unnoticed, or seeing it have supposed it belated
debris cast into the bay by the rivers, for the spring floods had
hardly yet fully subsided. But Bob's training as a hunter taught him
to take nothing for granted, and, watching intently for its
reappearance from the trough of the sea, he presently discerned in the
moonlight the faint glint of a paddle.

"A canoe!" he exclaimed, as he sat down. "An' what, now, be an Injun
doin' out there this time o' night? An' Injuns never crosses where
this un be. I'll see, now, who it is, an' what he's up to, whatever,"