He did not breast the
current with the same fierce determination with which he had crossed
through the storm to the raft, but drifted with it and reached the
opposite shore a quarter of a mile below the bateau. Here he waited for
a time, while the thickness of the clouds broke, and a gray light came
through them, revealing dimly the narrow path of pebbly wash along the
shore. Silently, a stark naked shadow in the night, he came back to the
bateau and crawled through his window.

He lighted a lamp, and turned it very low, and in the dim glow of it
rubbed his muscles until they burned. He was fit for tomorrow, and the
knowledge of that fitness filled him with a savage elation. A
good-humored love of sport had induced him to fling his first
half-bantering challenge into the face of Concombre Bateese, but that
sentiment was gone. The approaching fight was no longer an incident, a
foolish error into which he had unwittingly plunged himself. In this
hour it was the biggest physical thing that had ever loomed up in his
life, and he yearned for the dawn with the eagerness of a beast that
waits for the kill which comes with the break of day. But it was not
the half-breed's face he saw under the hammering of his blows. He could
not hate the half-breed. He could not even dislike him now. He forced
himself to bed, and later he slept. In the dream that came to him it
was not Bateese who faced him in battle, but St. Pierre Boulain.

He awoke with that dream a thing of fire in his brain. The sun was not
yet up, but the flush of it was painting the east, and he dressed
quietly and carefully, listening for some sound of awakening beyond the
bulkhead. If Marie-Anne was awake, she was very still. There was noise
ashore. Across the river he could hear the singing of men, and through
his window saw the white smoke of early fires rising above the
tree-tops. It was the Indian who unlocked the door and brought in his
breakfast, and it was the Indian who returned for the dishes half an
hour later.

After that Carrigan waited, tense with the desire for action to begin.
He sensed no premonition of evil about to befall him. Every nerve and
sinew in his body was alive for the combat. He thrilled with an
overwhelming confidence, a conviction of his ability to win, an almost
dangerous, self-conviction of approaching triumph in spite of the odds
in weight and brute strength which were pitted against him. A dozen
times he listened at the bulkhead b