Clamart and two others stamped out
the fires and came over the plank to the bateau to sleep. David
followed their example and went to bed.

The cook fires were burning again before the gray dawn was broken by a
tint of the sun, and when the voices of many men roused David, he went
to his window and saw a dozen figures where last night there had been
only four. When it grew lighter he recognized none of them. All were
strangers. Then he realized the significance of their presence. The
bateau had been traveling north, but downstream. Now it would still
travel north, but the water of the Yellow-knife flowed south into Great
Slave Lake, and the bateau must be towed. He caught a glimpse of the
two big York boats a little later, and six rowers to a boat, and after
that the bateau set out slowly but steadily upstream.

For hours David was at one window or the other, with something of awe
working inside him as he saw what they were passing through--and
between. He fancied the water trail was like an entrance into a
forbidden land, a region of vast and unbroken mystery, a country of
enchantment, possibly of death, shut out from the world he had known.
For the stream narrowed, and the forest along the shores was so dense
he could not see into it. The tree-tops hung in a tangled canopy
overhead, and a gloom of twilight filled the channel below, so that
where the sun shot through, it was like filtered moonlight shining on
black oil. There was no sound except the dull, steady beat of the
rowers' oars, and the ripple of water along the sides of the bateau.
The men did not sing or laugh, and if they talked it must have been in
whispers. There was no cry of birds from ashore. And once David saw Joe
Clamart's face as he passed the window, and it was set and hard and
filled with the superstition of a man who was passing through a
devil-country.

And then suddenly the end of it came. A flood of sunlight burst in at
the windows, and all at once voices came from ahead, a laugh, a shout,
and a yell of rejoicing from the bateau, and Joe Clamart started again
the everlasting song of the allouette bird that was plucked of
everything it had. Carrigan found himself grinning. They were a queer
people, these bred-in-the-blood northerners--still moved by the
superstitions of children. Yet he conceded that the awesome deadness of
the forest passage had put strange thoughts into his own heart.

Before nightfall Bateese and Joe Clamart came in and