La Bijou was a perfect expression of all that was dainty and delicate in the boat-builder's soul. Light as an egg-shell, and as fragile, her three-eighths-inch skin offered no protection from a driving chunk¹ of ice as small as a man's head. Nor, though the water was open, did she find a clear way, for the river was full of scattered² floes which had crumbled⁴ down from the rim-ice. And here, at once, through skilful⁵ handling, Corliss took to himself confidence in Frona.  
It was a great picture: the river rushing blackly between its crystalline walls; beyond, the green woods stretching upward to touch the cloud-flecked summer sky; and over all, like a furnace blast, the hot sun beating down. A great picture, but somehow Corliss's mind turned to his mother and her perennial⁶ tea, the soft carpets, the prim⁷ New England maid-servants, the canaries singing in the wide windows, and he wondered if she could understand. And when he thought of the woman behind him, and felt the dip and lift, dip and lift, of her paddle, his mother's women came back to him, one by one, and passed in long review,—pale, glimmering⁸ ghosts, he thought, caricatures of the stock which had replenished⁹ the earth, and which would continue to replenish¹⁰ the earth.
 
La Bijou skirted a pivoting¹¹ floe³, darted¹² into a nipping channel, and shot out into the open with the walls grinding together behind. Tommy groaned¹⁴.
 
"Well done!" Corliss encouraged.
 
"The fule wumman!" came the backward snarl¹⁵. "Why couldna she bide¹⁶ a bit?"
 
Frona caught his words and flung a laugh defiantly¹⁷. Vance darted a glance over his shoulder to her, and her smile was witchery. Her cap, perched precariously¹⁸, was sliding off, while her flying hair, aglint in the sunshine, framed her face as he had seen it framed on the Dyea Trail.
 
"How I should like to sing, if it weren't for saving one's breath. Say the 'Song of the Sword,' or the 'Anchor Chanty.'"
 
"Or the 'First Chanty,'" Corliss answered. "'Mine was the woman, darkling I found her,'" he hummed, significantly.
 
She flashed her paddle into the water on the opposite side in order to go wide of a jagged cake, and seemed not to hear. "I could go on this way forever."
 
"And I," Corliss affirmed, warmly.
 
But she refused to take notice, saying, instead, "Vance, do you know
I'm glad we're friends?"
"No fault of mine we're not more."
 
"You're losing your stroke, sir," she reprimanded; and he bent²¹ silently to the work.
 
La Bijou was driving against the current at an angle of forty-five degrees, and her resultant course was a line at right angles to the river. Thus, she would tap the western bank directly opposite the starting-point, where she could work up-stream in the slacker flood. But a mile of indented²² shore, and then a hundred yards of bluffs²⁴ rising precipitously from out a stiff current would still lie between them and the man to be rescued.
 
"Now let us ease up," Corliss advised, as they slipped into an eddy²⁵ and drifted with the back-tide under the great wall of rim-ice.
 
"Who would think it mid-May?" She glanced up at the carelessly poised²⁶ cakes. "Does it seem real to you, Vance?"
 
He shook his head.
 
"Nor to me. I know that I, Frona, in the flesh, am here, in a Peterborough, paddling for dear life with two men; year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, Alaska, Yukon River; this is water, that is ice; my arms are tired, my heart up a few beats, and I am sweating,—and yet it seems all a dream. Just think! A year ago I was in Paris!" She drew a deep breath and looked out over the water to the further shore, where Jacob Welse's tent, like a snowy handkerchief, sprawled²⁷ against the deep green of the forest. "I do not believe there is such a place," she added. "There is no Paris."
 
"And I was in London a twelvemonth past," Corliss meditated²⁸. "But I have undergone a new incarnation. London? There is no London now. It is impossible. How could there be so many people in the world? This is the world, and we know of fact that there are very few people in it, else there could not be so much ice and sea and sky. Tommy, here, I know, thinks fondly of a place he calls Toronto. He mistakes. It exists only in his mind,—a memory of a former life he knew. Of course, he does not think so. That is but natural; for he is no philosopher, nor does he bother—"
 
"Wheest, will ye!" Tommy fiercely whispered. "Your gabble'll bring it doon aboot oor heads."
 
Life is brief in the Northland, and fulfilment ever clutters²⁹ the heels of prophecy. A premonitory tremor³⁰ sighed down the air, and the rainbow wall swayed above them. The three paddles gripped the water with common accord. La Bijou leaped out from under. Broadside after broadside flared³¹ and crashed, and a thousand frigid³² tons thundered down behind them. The displaced water surged outward in a foamy³⁴, upstanding circle, and La Bijou, striving wildly to rise, ducked through the stiff overhang of the crest³⁵ and wallowed, half-full, in the trough.
 
"Dinna I tell ye, ye gabbling fules!"
 
"Sit still, and bail³⁶!" Corliss checked him sharply. "Or you'll not have the comfort of telling us anything."
 
He shook his head at Frona, and she winked³⁷ back; then they both chuckled³⁸, much like children over an escapade which looks disastrous³⁹ but turns out well.
 
Creeping timidly under the shadow of the impending⁴⁰ avalanches⁴¹, La Bijou slipped noiselessly up the last eddy. A corner of the bluff²³ rose savagely⁴² from the river—a monstrous⁴³ mass of naked rock, scarred and battered⁴⁴ of the centuries; hating the river that gnawed⁴⁵ it ever; hating the rain that graved its grim face with unsightly seams; hating the sun that refused to mate with it, whereof green life might come forth⁴⁶ and hide its hideousness⁴⁷. The whole force of the river hurled⁴⁸ in against it, waged furious war along its battlements, and caromed off into mid-stream again. Down all its length the stiff waves stood in serried⁴⁹ rows, and its crevices⁵⁰ and water-worn caverns⁵¹ were a-bellow with unseen strife⁵².
 
"Now! Bend to it! Your best!"
 
It was the last order Corliss could give, for in the din¹³ they were about to enter a man's voice were like a cricket's chirp⁵³ amid the growling⁵⁴ of an earthquake. La Bijou sprang forward, cleared the eddy with a bound, and plunged⁵⁵ into the thick. Dip and lift, dip and lift, the paddles worked with rhythmic⁵⁶ strength. The water rippled⁵⁸ and tore, and pulled all ways at once; and the fragile shell, unable to go all ways at once, shook and quivered with the shock of resistance. It veered⁵⁹ nervously⁶⁰ to the right and left, but Frona held it with a hand of steel. A yard away a fissure⁶¹ in the rock grinned at them. La Bijou leaped and shot ahead, and the water, slipping away underneath⁶², kept her always in one place. Now they surged out from the fissure, now in; ahead for half a yard, then back again; and the fissure mocked their toil⁶³.
 
Five minutes, each of which sounded a separate eternity⁶⁴, and the fissure was past. Ten minutes, and it was a hundred feet astern. Dip and lift, dip and lift, till sky and earth and river were blotted⁶⁵ out, and consciousness dwindled⁶⁶ to a thin line,—a streak⁶⁷ of foam³³, fringed on the one hand with sneering⁶⁸ rock, on the other with snarling⁶⁹ water. That thin line summed up all. Somewhere below was the beginning of things; somewhere above, beyond the roar and traffic, was the end of things; and for that end they strove.
 
And still Frona held the egg-shell with a hand of steel. What they gained they held, and fought for more, inch by inch, dip and lift; and all would have been well but for the flutter of Tommy's soul. A cake of ice, sucked beneath by the current, rose under his paddle with a flurry of foam, turned over its toothed edge, and was dragged back into the depths. And in that sight he saw himself, hair streaming upward and drowned hands clutching emptiness, going feet first, down and down. He stared, wide-eyed, at the portent⁷⁰, and his poised paddle refused to strike. On the instant the fissure grinned in their faces, and the next they were below the bluffs, drifting gently in the eddy.
 
Frona lay, head thrown back, sobbing⁷¹ at the sun; amidships Corliss sprawled panting; and forward, choking and gasping⁷³ and nerveless, the Scotsman drooped⁷⁴ his head upon his knees. La Bijou rubbed softly against the rim-ice and came to rest. The rainbow-wall hung above like a fairy pile; the sun, flung backward from innumerable facets⁷⁵, clothed it in jewelled splendor⁷⁶. Silvery streams tinkled⁷⁷ down its crystal slopes; and in its clear depths seemed to unfold, veil on veil, the secrets of life and death and mortal striving,—vistas of pale-shimmering azure⁷⁸ opening like dream-visions, and promising⁷⁹, down there in the great cool heart, infinite rest, infinite cessation and rest.
 
The topmost tower, delicately massive, a score of feet above them, swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple⁵⁷ of wheat in light summer airs. But Corliss gazed at it unheeding. Just to lie there, on the marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great gulps⁸⁰, and do nothing!—he asked no more. A dervish, whirling on heel till all things blur⁸¹, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying⁸² a paddle, and plying and plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space. And so Corliss.
 
But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back to him.
 
"We've got to get out of this," he said. His voice sounded like a man's whose throat has been scorched⁸³ by many and long potations. It frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.
 
"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which seemed to come to him from a far distance.
 
Tommy lifted his head and gazed about. "A doot we'll juist hae to gie it oop."
 
"Bend to it!"
 
"Ye'll no try it anither?"
 
"Bend to it!" Corliss repeated.
 
"Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.
 
Once again they fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished, save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning fissure. But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed them from above, and only a rocky buttress⁸⁴ of implacable hate, around whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between. Then La Bijou leaped and throbbed⁸⁵ and shook again, and the current slid out from under, and they remained ever in one place. Dip and lift, dip and lift, through an infinity⁸⁶ of time and torture and travail⁸⁷, till even the line dimmed and faded and the struggle lost its meaning. Their souls became merged⁸⁸ in the rhythm of the toil. Ever lifting, ever falling, they seemed to have become great pendulums⁸⁹ of time. And before and behind glimmered⁹⁰ the eternities, and between the eternities, ever lifting, ever falling, they pulsed in vast rhythmical⁹¹ movement. They were no longer humans, but rhythms. They surged in till their paddles touched the bitter rock, but they did not know; surged out, where chance piloted them unscathed through the lashing⁹² ice, but they did not see. Nor did they feel the shock of the smitten⁹³ waves, nor the driving spray that cooled their faces. . .
 
La Bijou veered out into the stream, and their paddles, flashing mechanically in the sunshine, held her to the return angle across the river. As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be recovered.
 
"A third attempt would have been useless," Corliss said, in a dry, cracked whisper.
 
And Frona answered, "Yes; our hearts would have surely broken."
 
Life, and the pleasant camp-fire, and the quiet rest in the noonday shade, came back to Tommy as the shore drew near, and more than all, blessed Toronto, its houses that never moved, and its jostling streets. Each time his head sank forward and he reached out and clutched the water with his paddle, the streets enlarged, as though gazing through a telescope and adjusting to a nearer focus. And each time the paddle drove clear and his head was raised, the island bounded forward. His head sank, and the streets were of the size of life; it raised, and Jacob Welse and the two men stood on the bank three lengths away.
 
"Dinna I tell ye!" he shouted to them, triumphantly⁹⁴.
 
But Frona jerked the canoe parallel with the bank, and he found himself gazing at the long up-stream stretch. He arrested a stroke midway, and his paddle clattered⁹⁵ in the bottom.
 
"Pick it up!" Corliss's voice was sharp and relentless⁹⁶.
 
"I'll do naething o' the kind." He turned a rebellious⁹⁷ face on his tormentor⁹⁸, and ground his teeth in anger and disappointment.
 
The canoe was drifting down with the current, and Frona merely held it in place. Corliss crawled forward on his knees.
 
"I don't want to hurt you, Tommy," he said in a low, tense voice, "so . . . well, just pick it up, that's a good fellow."
 
"I'll no."
 
"Then I shall kill you," Corliss went on, in the same calm, passionless way, at the same time drawing his hunting-knife from its sheath.
 
"And if I dinna?" the Scotsman queried⁹⁹ stoutly¹⁰⁰, though cowering¹⁰¹ away.
 
Corliss pressed gently with the knife. The point of the steel entered Tommy's back just where the heart should be, passed slowly through the shirt, and bit into the skin. Nor did it stop there; neither did it quicken, but just as slowly held on its way. He shrank back, quivering.
 
"There! there! man! Pit it oop!" he shrieked¹⁰². "I maun gie in!"
 
Frona's face was quite pale, but her eyes were hard, brilliantly hard, and she nodded approval.
 
"We're going to try this side, and shoot across from above," she called to her father. "What? I can't hear. Tommy? Oh, his heart's weak. Nothing serious." She saluted¹⁰³ with her paddle. "We'll be back in no time, father mine. In no time."
 
Stewart River was wide open, and they ascended¹⁰⁴ it a quarter of a mile before they shot its mouth and continued up the Yukon. But when they were well abreast¹⁰⁵ of the man on the opposite bank a new obstacle faced them. A mile above, a wreck¹⁰⁶ of an island clung desperately¹⁰⁷ to the river bed. Its tail dwindled to a sand-spit which bisected the river as far down as the impassable blu............