oom to stretch himself," said he.

"Feel! I feel as if I could run a thousand miles and jump off the ends
of the earth--"

"And dive to the bottom of the sea and harness whales and play
bowling-balls with the spheres, you young rantipoles," added M.
Radisson ironically.

"The fever of the adventurer," said Jean quietly. "My uncle knows it."

I laughed again. "I was wondering if Eli Kirke ever felt this way," I
explained.

"Pardieu," retorted M. de Radisson, loosening his coat, "if people
moved more and moped less, they'd brew small bile! Come, lads! Come,
lads! We waste time!"

And we were paddling again, in quick, light strokes, silent from zest,
careless of toil, strenuous from love of it.

Once we came to a bend in the river where the current was so strong
that we had dipped our paddles full five minutes against the mill race
without gaining an inch. The canoe squirmed like a hunter balking a
hedge, and Jean's blade splintered off to the handle. But M. de
Radisson braced back to lighten the bow; the prow rose, a sweep of the
paddles, and on we sped!

"Hard luck to pull and not gain a boat length," observed Jean.

"Harder luck not to pull, and to be swept back," corrected M. de
Radisson.

We left the main river to thread a labyrinthine chain of waterways,
where were portages over brambly shores and slippery rocks, with the
pace set at a run by M. de Radisson. Jean and I followed with the pack
straps across our foreheads and the provisions on our backs. Godefroy
brought up the rear with the bark canoe above his head.

At one place, where we disembarked, M. de Radisson traced the sand with
the muzzle of his musket.

"A boot-mark," said he, drawing the faint outlines of a footprint, "and
egad, it's not a man's foot either!"

"Impossible!" cried Jean. "We are a thousand miles from any white-man."

"There's nothing impossible on this earth," retorted Radisson
impatiently. "But pardieu, there are neither white women in this
wilderness, nor ghosts wearing women's boots! I'd give my right hand
to know what left that mark!"

After that his haste grew feverish. We snatched our meals by turns
between paddles. He seemed to grudge the waste of each night, camping
late and launching early; and it was Godefroy's complaint that each
portage was made so swiftly there was no time for that solace of the
common voyageur--the boatman's pipe. For eight days we travelled
without seeing a sign of human pre