eapon aloft. There was
the scream as of a woman's cry--and the shrieking wind had swept the
snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when
the combing billows of drift passed, the apparition had faded. We four
stood alone staring in space with strange questionings.

"Egad!" gasped Radisson, "I don't mind when the wind howls like a wolf,
but when it takes to the death-scream, with snow like the skirts of a
shroud----"

"May the Lord have mercy on us!" muttered La Chesnaye, crossing
himself. "It is sign of death! That was a woman's figure. It is sign
of death!"

"Sign of death!" raged Ben, stamping his impotent fury, "'tis him--'tis
him! The Judas Iscariot, and he's left us to die so that he may steal
the furs!"

"Hold quiet!" ordered M. Radisson. "Look, you rantipole--who is that?"

'Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emerging from the gloom of the snow like
a ghost. By signs and Indian words the fellow offered to guide us back
to our Habitation.

We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne flitting away like a shadow,
as he had come. And the first thing we did was to hold a service of
thanks to God Almighty for our deliverance.

[1] See Radisson's account--Prince Society (1885), Boston--Bodleian
Library.--Canadian Archives, 1895-'96.

CHAPTER XIV

A CHALLENGE

Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, muffling the sea,
day after day fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf.
The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts
like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an
occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of a branch.

No east, no west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness,
billowing snow, and a silence as of death. It was the cold, silent,
mystic, white world of northern winter.

At one moment the fort door flings wide with a rush of frost like smoke
clouds, and in stamps Godefroy, shaking snow off with boisterous noise
and vowing by the saints that the drifts are as high as the St. Pierre's
deck. M. Groseillers orders the rascal to shut the door; but bare has
the latch clicked when young Jean whisks in, tossing snow from cap and
gauntlets like a clipper shaking a reef to the spray, and declares that
the snow is already level with the fort walls.

"Eh, nephew," exclaims Radisson sharply, "how are the cannon?"

Ben Gillam, who has lugged himself from bed to the hearth for th