"Better sit still. It is safer. We will help the lady."

Miss Sommerton was talking rapidly in French--with rather overdone
eagerness--to Mrs. Perrault. She took no notice of her fellow-voyager as
she lightly stepped exactly in the centre of the canoe, and sank down on
the rug in front of him, with the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to
that somewhat treacherous craft. The two stalwart boatmen--one at the
prow, the other at the stern of the canoe--with swift and dexterous
strokes, shot it out into the stream. Trenton could not but admire the
knowledge of these two men and their dexterous use of it. Here they
were on a swiftly flowing river, with a small fall behind them and a
tremendous cataract several miles in front, yet these two men, by their
knowledge of the currents, managed to work their way up stream with the
least possible amount of physical exertion. The St. Maurice at this
point is about half a mile wide, with an island here and there, and now
and then a touch of rapids. Sometimes the men would dash right across
the river to the opposite bank, and there fall in with a miniature Gulf
Stream that would carry them onward without exertion. Sometimes they
were near the densely wooded shore, sometimes in the center of the
river. The half-breed who stood behind Trenton, leant over to him, and
whispered--

"You can now smoke if you like, the wind is down stream."

Naturally, Mr. Trenton wished to smoke. The requesting of permission to
do so, it struck him, might open the way to conversation. He was not an
ardent conversationalist, but it seemed to him rather ridiculous that
two persons should thus travel together in a canoe without saying a word
to each other.