ultitude of colored tents, the half-naked
men, the great raft floating almost without perceptible motion on the
placid breast of the river had stirred his imagination until he saw a
strange picture. But there was nothing Arabic, nothing desert-like, in
this man his binoculars brought within a few feet of his eyes. He was
more like a viking pirate who had roved the sea a few centuries ago.
One great, bare arm was raised as David looked, and his booming voice
was rolling over the river again. His hair was shaggy, and untrimmed,
and red; he wore a short beard that glistened in the sun--he was
laughing as he waved and shouted to Marie-Anne--a joyous, splendid
giant of a man who seemed almost on the point of leaping into the water
in his eagerness to clasp in his naked arms the woman who was coming to
him.

David drew a deep breath, and there came an unconscious tightening at
his heart as he turned his glasses upon Marie-Anne. She was still
standing in the bow of the York boat, and her back was toward him. He
could see the glisten of the sun in her hair. She was waving her
handkerchief, and the poise of her slim body told him that in her
eagerness she would have darted from the bow of the boat had she
possessed wings.

Again he looked at St. Pierre. And this was the man who was no match
for Concombre Bateese! It was inconceivable. Yet he heard Marie-Anne's
voice repeating those very words in his ear. But she had surely been
joking with him. She had been storing up this little surprise for him.
She had wanted him to discover with his own eyes what a splendid man
was this chief of the Boulains. And yet, as David stared, there came to
him an unpleasant thought of the incongruity of this thing he was
looking upon. It struck upon him like a clashing discord, the fact of
matehood between these two--a condition inconsistent and out of tune
with the beautiful things he had built up in his mind about the woman.
In his soul he had enshrined her as a lovely wildflower, easily
crushed, easily destroyed, a sweet treasure to be guarded from all that
was rough and savage, a little violet-goddess as fragile as she was
brave and loyal. And St. Pierre, standing there at the edge of his
raft, looked as if he had come up out of the caves of a million years
ago! There was something barbaric about him. He needed only a club and
a shield and the skin of a beast about his loins to transform him into
prehistoric man. At least these were his first