were driven to toil with tracking lines up swift currents, more often
than not immersed to their waists in the icy waters of the river, or
for weary miles they staggered over portages with heavy loads upon
their backs. To add to their difficulties a season of rain set in, and
hardly a day passed without its hours of drizzle or downpour. But they
could not permit rain or weather to retard their progress.

Always between sunrise and sunset they were tormented, too, by myriads
of black flies and mosquitoes, the pests of the North. There was no
protection against the attacks of the insects. The black flies were
particularly vicious; not only was their bite poisonous, but a drop of
blood appeared wherever one of them made a wound, and in consequence
the faces, hands, and wrists of the toiling voyageurs were not alone
constantly swollen, but were coated with a mixture of blood and sweat.

Shad, less toughened than his companions, suffered more than they. He
was actually made ill for a day or two by the poison thus inoculated
into his system, though with his characteristic determination, he
still insisted, against the protests of the others, upon doing his
full share of the work. Dick advised him, finally, to carry a fat pork
rind in his pocket and to occasionally apply the greasy side of the
rind to his face and hands. This he discovered offered some relief,
though, as he remarked, grease, added to blood and sweat, gave him the
appearance of a painted savage.

With the evening camp-fire, however, came a respite to the weary
travellers, and recompense for all the hardship and toil of the day.
Here they would relax after supper, and with vast enjoyment smoke and
chat or tell stories of wild adventure.

Shad contributed tales of college pranks, which never failed to bring
forth uproarious laughter, while his vivid descriptions of battles on
the gridiron or on the diamond, illustrated with diagrams drawn with a
stick upon the ground, and minutely explained, held his hearers in
suspense until the final goal was kicked or the last inning played.

Dick and Ed described many stirring personal adventures, the latter
embellishing his stories with so many fantastic flights of imagination
that Shad would scarcely have known where fact ended and fiction began
had Dick not made it a point to interject his warnings of the eternal
vengeance that awaited Ed if he did not "have a care of his yamin'."

One morning during the third week a