Gazing at the driving clouds that blotted out the forest, she tried to ask if he could find the river, but just then the canoe rolled and the little spritsail swelled like a balloon. There was a hiss and a splash, and the top of a wave that split at the stern and rolled forward poured in at the waist. Thirlwell bent over the paddle and slackened the sheet, the canoe swung her bows out, and leaped ahead. Spray blew about in showers; the foam stood in a ridge amidships and boiled high about the stern. It seemed to Agatha that they were traveling like a toboggan, and she had an exhilarating sense of speed that banished the thought of danger. "How fast are we going?" she shouted. "I don't know. Five miles an hour, perhaps!" It sounded ridiculous; Agatha had felt as if they were flying. Then she saw that skill was needed to keep the canoe before the wind and Thirlwell ran two risks. If he let the craft fall off too far, the sail would swing across and she might be capsized by the shock; if he let her swerve to windward, the following wave would break on board and she would be swamped. Thirlwell looked highly strung but very cool. A mistake would have disastrous consequences; if he gave way to the strain for a moment, the canoe would sink. But she knew he would not give way, and it was comforting to see that the half-breed shared her confidence. He was, no doubt, a _voyageur_ from his boyhood, but it was plain that he did not want to take the steering paddle. Sometimes, when a savage gust screamed about them and whipped up the spray in clouds, Thirlwell let the sheet run round a pin; sometimes he sank the paddle deep and she saw its handle bend and the blood flush his face. Drops of sweat ran down his forehead, but his glance was fixed and calm. The strain on brain and muscle braced without exciting him; he seemed to accept it as something to which he was used. He could be trusted in an emergency, and for some obscure reason she was glad to feel he was the man she had thought. Then she watched the other canoe, which had dropped astern. The _Metis_ had set their sail, but she was not running well. She swerved when she lifted with the waves and rolled until it looked as if she would capsize. Now and then a sea broke over the gunwale and a crouching half-breed desperately threw out the water. Another sat on a beam in the high stern and his pose was strangely tense. But for all Agatha's trust in Thirlwell, it was daunting to watch the laboring craft and the seas that threatened to swamp her. They looked worse when one saw their hollow fronts and raging crests, and Agatha fixed her eyes ahead.