It was much too big and clumsy for him to control without the
stream's help, though he labored doggedly with his paddle. Now
he was broadside to the current, now he was being spun round and
round, but always he was carried farther and farther from the
spot where he had embarked. He passed about a bend; and a
hundred yards beyond, about a second bend; then the stream opened
up straight before him a half-mile of smooth running water. Far
down it, at the point where the trees met in the unbroken line of
the forest and the water seemed to vanish mysteriously, he could
distinguish a black moving object; some ark or raft, doubtless.

In the smoother water of the long reach, Hannibal began to make
head against the flood. The farther shore became the nearer, and
finally he drove the bow of his canoe up on a bit of shelving
bank, and seizing his pack and rifle, sprang ashore. Panting and
exhausted, he paused just long enough to push the canoe out into
the stream again, and then, with his rifle and pack in his hands,
turned his small tear-stained face toward the wooded slope
beyond. As he toiled up it in the wide silence of the dawn, a
mournful wind burst out of the north, filling the air about him
with withered leaves and the dead branches of trees.




CHAPTER VIII

ON THE RIVER