The seething waves
lashed to foam with the long, low moan of the world-devouring serpent
which, legend says, is ever an-hungering to devour voyageurs on life's
sea. And for all the world that reef of combing breakers was not unlike
a serpent type of malignant elements bent on man's destruction!
Then, to the amaze of us all, we had left the lower river. The canoe was
cutting up-stream against a new current; and the moan of the pounding
surf receded to the rear. Clouds blew inland, muffling the moon; and M.
Radisson ordered us ashore for the night. Feet at a smouldering fire too
dull for an enemy to see and heads pillowed on logs, we bivouacked with
the frosty ground for bed.
"Bad beds make good risers," was all M. Radisson's comfort, when Godefroy
grumbled out some complaint.
A _hard_ master, you say? A wise one, say I, for the forces he fought in
that desolate land were as adamant. Only the man dauntless as adamant
could conquer. And you must remember, while the diamond and the charcoal
are of the same family, 'tis the diamond has lustre, because it is
_hard_. Faults, M. Radisson had, which were almost crimes; but look you
who judge him--his faults were not the faults of nearly all other men,
the faults which _are_ a crime--_the crime of being weak_!
The first thing our eyes lighted on when the sun rose in flaming darts
through the gray haze of dawn was a half-built fort on an island in
mid-river.
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