at its lading, if any of this had survived the
runaway flight, must be soaked and sodden. But the triumphant fact
remained--the canoe was found.

XII

IN SEARCH OF AN ANCESTOR

FOR a moment neither of them spoke. Then Prime broke out in a sardonic
laugh.

"That is a heavenly prospect for dinner, supper, breakfast, and dinner
all rolled into one, isn't it, now? If there is anything left in the
canoe, it's soaked to a pulp--to say nothing of the fact that we can't
get to it. How are we going to raft ourselves over there without the
axe?"

Lucetta went down to the margin of the pond-like reach and tested its
depth with a tossed stone.

"It is deep," she said, "swimming-deep. The shallows must be all on the
other side."

"I'll go down-stream a piece and see if there isn't some place where I
can wade," Prime offered. But at this she shook her head.

"We passed out of all the wading depths days and days ago. If you will
make a fire, I'll swim over and get the canoe."

Prime had a world of objections to offer to this, and he flung them into
the breach one after another. It was no woman's job. The water was cold,
and it would be a long swim--for a guess, not less than a hundred yards;
she had gone without food so long that she was not fit for it; if she
should try it and fail, he would have to go in after her, and that would
mean suicide for both of them.

She heard him through with a quaint little lip-curl of amusement at his
fertility in obstacle raising, and at the end calmly fished the remains
of his handkerchief out of his pocket and bound it about her head.

"Another attack of the undying protective instinct," she retorted
light-heartedly. "You go on and make the fire and I'll save the wreck,
or what there is left of it." Whereupon she walked away up-stream,
losing herself shortly for Prime in a thicket beyond the first bend of
the river above.

Prime fell to work gathering fuel, feeling less like a man than at any
time since the voyage had begun. It stabbed his _amour-propre_ to the
heart to be compelled to let her take the man's part while he did the
squaw's. But there seemed to be no help for it.

While he was kindling the fire he heard a plunge, and a little later saw
the coifed head making diagonally across from the upper bend toward the
canoe. She was swimming easily with the side stroke, and he could see
the rhythmical flash and swin