The little more patience, wrung like a last tax from exhaustion, was measured out, and not vainly. The specks like wild ducks rode nearer, shaping themselves into Huron canoes. In rigid calm the half-breed girl watched them approach, fly past with regular and beautiful motion of the paddles, and make their entrance into the Ottawa. Her eyes shone across the leaves, but Annahotaha, sweeping all the horizon with a sight formed and trained to keenest use, caught no sign of ambush or human life on the islands. When the fleet was far off, his young daughter rose up and unsheathed her knife to cut raftwood. “My father is a great man,” was the only weakness she allowed herself, and in this her gratified pride was restricted to a mere statement of fact. The raft, made of many large branches bound securely together, occupied them some time. On this frail and uneasy flooring the half-breed placed her companion. Claire was instructed to hold to it though the water should rise around her waist. The space betwixt island and north shore was a very dangerous passage for them. Massawippa swam and propelled the raft with the current, fighting for it midway, while Claire clung in desperation and begged the brown face turned up to her from the water to let her go and to swim out alone. When they finally stood on the north bank, streams of water running down their persons, Massawippa’s black hair shining as it clung to her cheeks, and their raft escaping from their reach, they felt that a great gulf of experience divided them from the island and Jouaneaux’s house. “This time we lose our ropes,” said the half-breed girl. “My hands were too numb. And now we have nothing left but our knives and tinder.” To Claire the rest of the day was a heavy dream. Giddy from fasting and exposure, with swimming eyes she saw the landscape. Sometimes Massawippa walked with an arm around her waist, sometimes held low boughs out of her way, introducing her to the deeper depths of Canadian forest. They did not talk, but reserved their strength for plodding; and thus they edged along the curves and windings of the Ottawa. Claire took no thought of Massawippa’s destination for the night; they were making progress if they followed beside the track of the expedition. Before dark she noticed that the land ascended, and afterwards they left the river below, for a glooming pile of mountain was to be climbed. Perhaps no wearier feet ever toiled up that steep during all the following years, though the mountain was piously named Calvary and its top held sacred as a shrine, to be visited by many a pilgrim.[10] Sometimes the two girls hugged this rugged ascent, lying against it, and paused for breath. The rush and purr of the river went on below, and all the wilderness night sounds were magnified by their negations--the night silences.