arms free.

"Move careful," she said, without looking at him.

Sam did not need the warning. The icy quality of the spray in his face
filled him with a wholesome respect for the lake. He cautiously worked
his arms free of the blanket, and, raising himself on his elbows,
looked over the gunwale. He saw the waves come tumbling clumsily
toward them and gasped.

It seemed like a miracle the little craft had survived so long. One
glance at the shore showed him why they could not land. He fell back,
and his hands flew to the knot behind his head. He tore off the gag
and threw it overboard. Bela looked at him for the fraction of a
second.

"Well, what's your game?" he bitterly demanded. "It's pretty near
ended for both of us. I hope you're satisfied. You savage!"

Bela's eyes did not swerve again from that point ahead. In one respect
she was a savage; that was the extraordinary stolidity she could
assume. For all the attention she gave him he might have been the wind
whistling.

At first it fanned his anger outrageously. He searched his mind for
cruel taunts to move her. It was all wasted. She paddled ahead like a
piece of the boat itself, now pausing a second, now driving hard, as
those fixed, wary eyes telegraphed automatically to her arms.

One cannot continue to rail at a wooden woman. Her impassivity finally
wore him out. He fell silent, and covered his face with an arm that he
might not have to look at her. Besides, he felt seasick.

East of Nine-Mile Point the lake shore makes in sharply, forming the
wide, deep bay which stretches all the way to the foot of the lake
where Musquasepi, the little river, takes its rise. The stony,
ice-clad shores, backed by pines, continued for a mile or so, then
gave place to wide, bare mud-flats reaching far inland.

On the flats the ice did not pile up, but lay in great cakes where the
receding waters stranded it. This ice was practically all melted now,
and the view across the flats was unimpeded. It was nine miles from
the point to the intake of the river by water and fifteen miles by
land. The trail skirted inside the flats.

Bela kept to the shore until the increasing light made further
concealment useless. She then headed boldly across for the river. It
was at this time that the wind began to blow its hardest.

She could not tell, of course, if she had yet been discovered from the
point. Not knowing the ways of white men, she could not guess if they
were likely to p