And all the while the winds were piping overhead with a roar as from
the wings of the great storm bird which broods over all that northland.
Then the blore of the trumpeting wind was answered by a counter fugue
from the sea, with a roll and pound of breakers across the sand of the
traverse. Carried by the swift current, we had shot into the bay. It
was morning, but the black of night had given place to the white
darkness of northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an
idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's
figure loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of tumbling waves
came the grinding as of an earthquake.
"We are lost! We are lost!" shrieked Gillam in panic, cowering back to
the stern. "The storm's drifted down polar ice from the north and
we're caught! We're caught!" he cried.
He sprang to his feet as if to leap into that white waste of seething
ice foam. 'Twas the frenzy of terror, which oft seizes men adrift on
ice. In another moment he would have swamped us under the pitching
crest of a mountain sea. But M. Radisson turned. One blow of his pole
and the foolish youth fell senseless to the bottom of the canoe.
"Look, sir, look!" screamed La Chesnaye, "the canoe's getting
ice-logged! She's sunk to the gun'ales!"
But at the moment when M.
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