ember had that portage been afire, and he
wondered if this was another trick of O'Grady's. The fire spread
rapidly as they advanced. It burst forth in a dozen places along the
shore of the lake, sending up huge volumes of black smoke riven by
lurid tongues of flame. O'Grady and his canoe became less and less
distinct. Finally they disappeared entirely in the lowering clouds of
the conflagration. Jan's eyes searched the water as they approached
shore, and at last he saw what he had expected to find--O'Grady's empty
canoe drifting slowly away from the beach. O'Grady and the Chippewayan
were gone.

Over that half-mile portage Jan staggered with his eyes half closed and
his breath coming in gasps. The smoke blinded him, and at times the
heat of the fire scorched his face. In several places it had crossed
the trail, and the hot embers burned through their moccasins. Once
Jackpine uttered a cry of pain. But Jan's lips were set. Then, above
the roar of the flames sweeping down upon the right of them, he caught
the low thunder of Dead Man's Whirlpool and the cataract that had made
the portage necessary. From the heated earth their feet came to a
narrow ledge of rock, worn smooth by the furred and moccasined tread of
centuries, with the chasm on one side of them and a wall of rock on the
other. Along the crest of that wall, a hundred feet above them, the
fire swept in a tornado of flame and smoke. A tree crashed behind them,
a dozen seconds too late. Then the trail widened and sloped down into
the dip that ended the portage. For an instant Jan paused to get his
bearing, and behind him Jackpine shouted a warning.

Up out of the smoldering oven where O'Grady should have found his canoe
two men were rushing toward them. They were O'Grady and the
Chippewayan. He caught the gleam of a knife in the Indian's hand. In
O'Grady's there was something larger and darker--a club, and Jan
dropped his end of the canoe with a glad cry, and drew one of the
knives from his belt. Jackpine came to his side, with his hunting knife
in his hand, measuring with glittering eyes the oncoming foe of his
race--the Chippewayan.

And Jan laughed softly to himself, and his teeth gleamed again, for at
last fate was playing his game. The fire had burned O'Grady's canoe,
and it was to rob him of his own canoe that O'Grady was coming to
fight. A canoe! He laughed again, while the fire roared over his head
and the whirlpool thundered at his feet. O'Grady would f