Dollard caught her in his arms, and set her upon his knees. They held each other in an embrace like the rigid lock of death, the smiling, pale night seeming full of crashing and grinding noises, and of chaos like mountains falling. Length after length the boat shot on, dumb heart-beat after dumb heart-beat, mile after mile. It began to shiver uneasily. Alert to what was before them, and indifferent to their freight of stone in the boat’s end, the Hurons slipped to their knees, each unshipped his oars and took one of the dripping pair for a paddle, fixed his roused eyes on the twisting current, and prepared for the rapids of Lachine. Like an arrow just when the bowstring twangs came the boat at a rock, to be paddled as cleanly aside as if that hissing mass had been a shadow. Right, left, ahead the rapids boiled up; slight shocks ran through the thin-skinned craft as it dodged, shied, leaped, half whirled and half reversed, tumultuously tumbled or shot as if going down a flume. While it lasted the danger seemed endless. But those skilled paddlers played through it with grins of delight folding creases in their leather faces, nor did they settle down dogged and dull Indians again until the boat shot freely out of the rapids upon tame moonlighted ripples once more. After the Lachine, Dollard lifted his head and said to Claire: “We start on our expedition as soon as mass is done this morning. It goes without saying that I was pledged to this when I went to Quebec. I cannot go back from it now.” “There is no thought of your going back from it now,” Claire spoke to him. “But, Dollard, is there hope of any man’s returning alive from this expedition?” “We are sworn to give no quarter and to take none.” The Indians, pointing their boat towards Montreal, were now pulling with long easy strokes. A little rocky island rose between voyagers and settling moon. “O Claire! I loved you so! that is all my excuse. I meant not to bring such anguish upon you.” “Dollard, I forbid you to regret your marriage. I myself have no regrets.” “I knew not what I was doing.” His words dropped with effort. She could feel his throat strongly sobbing. “Don’t fret, my Dollard.” Claire smoothed down those laboring veins with her satin palm. “We are, indeed, young to die. I thought we should live years together. But this marriage gave us nearly a week of paradise. And that is more happiness, I am experienced enough to believe, than many wedded couples have in a lifetime.” “Claire, the family of the Governor Maisonneuve will receive you and treat you with all courtesy; first for your own sake, and in a small degree for mine. I have set down in my will that you are to have all my rude belongings, and Jacques is sworn your trusty servant.”