er.

Without stay we still pushed forward. The arrowy pace was merciless to
red men and white; but that was the kind of service the great North-West
Company always demanded. Some ten miles from the outlet of Lake
Nipissangue (Nipissing) foul weather threatened delay. The _Bourgeois_
were for proceeding at any risk; but as the thunder-clouds grew blacker
and the wind more violent, the head steersman lost his temper and
grounded his canoe on the sands at _Point a la Croix_. Springing ashore
he flung down his pole and refused to go on.

"Sacredie!" he screamed, first pointing to the gathering storm and then
to the crosses that marked the fate of other foolhardy _voyageurs_,
"Allez si vous voulez! Pour moi je n'irai pas; ne voyez pas le danger!"

A hurricane of wind, snapping the great oaks as a chopper breaks
kindling wood, enforced his words. Canoes were at once beached and
tarpaulins drawn over the bales of provisions. The men struggled to
hoist a tent; but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads, and
before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain-drift drenched every
one to the skin. By sundown the storm had gone southeast and we
unrighteously consoled ourselves that it would probably disorganize the
Hudson's Bay brigade as much as it had ours. Plainly, we were there for
the night. _Point a la Croix_ is too dangerous a spot for navigation
after dark. With much patience we kindled the soaked underbrush and
finally got a pile of logs roaring in the woods and gathered round the
fire.

The glare in the sky attracted the lake tribes from their lodges.
Indians, half-breeds and shaggy-haired whites--degenerate traders, who
had lost all taste for civilization and retired with their native wives
after the fashion of the north country--came from the Nipissangue
encampments and joined our motley throng. Presently the natives drew off
to a fire by themselves, where there would be no white-man's restraint.
They had either begged or stolen traders' rum, and after the hard trip
from Ste. Anne, were eager for one of their mad _boissons_--a
drinking-bout interspersed with jigs and fights.

Stretched before our camp, I watched the grotesque figures leaping and
dancing between the firelight and the dusky woods like forest demons.
With the leaves rustling overhead, the water laving the pebbles on the
shore, and the washed pine air stimulating one's blood like an
intoxicant, I began wondering how many years of solitary life