smen.

Old Moosetooth grunted a command and the men ran to the hawsers holding
the scows against the current. Then Moosetooth and La Biche, without even
a look at their unconcerned families sitting stolidly in the gloom on the
riverbank, took their places in the stern of each boat. Each began, as he
leaned on his oar, to cut himself a new pipe of tobacco and Colonel
Howell turned to the policeman.

"Sergeant," he remarked, "I think we are ready. Will you examine the
outfit?"

The tall sergeant bowed slightly and with a graceful wave of his hand,
stepped to the edge of one of the nearest scows. With a cursory glance at
the mixed cargo of boxes, barrels and bags--hardly to be made out in the
twilight--he turned and waved his hand again toward Colonel Howell. Then,
quite casually, he faced the two steersmen.

"Bon jour, gentlemen," he exclaimed and lifted his big white hat.

Colonel Howell and his friends took the sergeant's hand in turn and then
sprang aboard the boat. While the two steersmen lifted their own hats and
grunted with the only show of animation that had lit their faces, the
ceremony of inspection was over and the long voyage was officially begun.

CHAPTER IX

THE SONG OF THE VOYAGEUR

Hardly seeming to move, the deeply laden scows veered more and more into
the current, until at last the swift flow of the river began to push them
forward. But even before La Biche's boat, which was ahead and farthest
from the shore, was fully in the grasp of a swirling eddy, the bronzed
steersman, his pipe firmly set in his teeth, hurled his body on the
steering oar and plunged the far end of it against the oily current.

At the same moment Moosetooth dropped his own oar and almost instantly
both boats straightened out before the onrushing waters. It was a moment
long waited for by Norman and Roy, and at the time no thought was given
to any arrangements for comfort. The boys threw themselves on the forward
deck, their sweaters close about their throats against the chilling fog
and the cool breeze, while Colonel Howell sat muffled in his overcoat on
the edge of the deck.

Such events in the history of the Northern rivers were in the old days
momentous. Their only ceremony had been the parting "Bon jour" of the
policeman.

"In the old days," suggested Norman, "in the days that our friend Paul
would have loved, the voyageurs had a song for a time like this."

"The riverman's song of farewell," spoke up young