Madeleine rose, and sent her rapturous voice singing into the ears of all: "The miracle! The miracle!"

Already a channel of black water frothed and bubbled between the English sailors and the French settlers, a channel which widened each moment, as the ice-floe which the change of temperature had parted so suddenly from the sh.o.r.e drifted seawards, drawn out by the strong gulf current, bearing the men s.n.a.t.c.hed from death, the little ice-locked ship, and the girl who had trusted so firmly and so well.

They flocked round her, the rough sailors, crying like children, and knelt to kiss her hands.

"To work!" she cried, pointing to the silver strip which held the floe united.

But before the men could again use their axes the strain told. The ice cracked again and the field was divided into two parts. There was a momentary danger lest the brigantine should be crushed between the floes, but this peril was averted by the regularity of the current.

The men swung themselves aboard, lifting Madeleine up the ladder of ropes and so upon deck. The enemy already had become grotesque black spots upon the sh.o.r.e.

"Clear the decks for battle!" the captain thundered as the little ship ran free of the ice.

The Frenchman had altered her course, and was bearing down upon the _Dartmouth_, roaring with all her guns.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE THIRST.

Onawa, daughter of Shuswap, vagrant and traitress, she who had brought disaster upon her own people, continued to reap the reward of all her constancy to the enemy of her race. Famished and parched, she sank into a bed of snow, and rested her wildly throbbing head against a frosted tree. She had not eaten for many hours, her shelter was more than a league away, and her strength was gone. Her reward also was a maddening thirst.

After tracking down the Englishmen, watching them in the fall of the snow, enduring every privation until she had learnt their strength, she had gone at full speed to the settlement, madly hoping even then that La Salle might look on her with favour, despite her branded cheeks and mutilated face. His reward was to give her over to the soldiers, who had mocked her because she was of the hated race, a savage in their eyes, and had bound her with a rope and scourged her with the end of it, and had even struck her with their fists when she halted from exhaustion, and would have stabbed her to death had she refused to obey. Thus she received her full reward. And now she could do no more.

Neuralgic pains coursed through her head, until the weight of her hair became a torment. Feverishly she sucked a handful of snow, but the awful thirst remained unquenched. The sounds of the chase entered her ears dimly from that half-lit region ahead, until drowsiness pa.s.sed into her body, and her head dropped, and her eyes closed, and the sleep which moves imperceptibly into death came upon her. Her pa.s.sionate heart lowered its beat, her pulses throbbed more sluggishly, as she drew close to the threshold which separates life and its object from the world of dreams. Her body collapsed, her head slid down; the soft snow sucked her in like quicksand.

A figure pa.s.sed among the slim terebinth columns. Though the sleeper had brought down her father into dishonour, had betrayed her tribe, and called the shadow of death across the home of her kindred, her sister had not forgotten her. The figure approached, bent over the huddled shape, and shook it roughly back to life.

"Tuschota!" muttered the girl, as her eyes opened upon the immobile brown face.

"Rise," said the woman. "Lean on me, and I will take you to my hut."

"Leave me here," moaned Onawa. "I would lie until the great sleep comes."

"I am your sister. I may not leave you thus to die. Yonder food awaits you, and drink, and the warmth of burning logs."

She a.s.sisted Onawa to rise. The girl staggered and clung with dead hands. Together they pa.s.sed down the slope, and so came to the cabin cunningly hidden amid snowy bush. A fire burnt redly, and hard by stood a stone vessel filled with rice-water. Towards this Onawa reached her hands, with the cry:

"I am tortured with thirst."

Without a word her sister gave her drink, and watched her while she gulped at the tepid liquor. Suddenly she put out her hand, and grasped the vessel, saying:

"See! I have meat ready for you."

Onawa partook of the food like a famished beast, and as strength returned the former love of life awoke, and she longed to go forth to renew the hopeless quest; but she felt her sister's eyes reading her thoughts, and presently she heard that sister's voice:

"It is good to live, Onawa."

She made no reply, but leaned forward, thrusting her hands against the scarlet wood.

"Even when son and husband are taken away, and the light fails, and all the ground is dark, it is still good to live," went on the voice. "Why the good G.o.d gives this love of life we may not know."

"Give me more drink," the girl panted.

"Our father shall soon pa.s.s into the spirit land," went on the stern woman, unheeding her request. "He is old, but 'tis not age that saps his strength. Honour has departed from him. He has lost the headship, and another fills his office."

Onawa stared sullenly into the leaping heart of the fire.

"As this life continues we find trouble. You have lost beauty, and I a son. We shall not regain that which we have lost. Sisters in blood we are, and sisters in unhappiness also."

"I have brought sorrow into your life," muttered Onawa, less in penitence than defiance.

"And shall do so again. This night you have brought the enemy of my people out from Acadie. There was a time when you betrayed my son into the hands of him who now spurns you from his side. That which is done cannot be undone, and G.o.d shall punish."

"Why, then, have you brought me here?" cried Onawa fiercely. "Why did you not leave me to perish, that you might be rid of me for ever?"

"Remember you not the words that I spoke to you in the grove? I bade you have in mind that in the time when you should hunger and thirst you might turn to me. I have not forgotten, though you turned against me when your heart followed its own longing.

"I grieved for your Richard."

"So the hunter grieves when he by mischance has slain the bear cub which has strayed. And so he avoids the mother if he loves his life."

At that moment there rang in her steady voice a threat. Onawa looked up and met a suffering brown face and large quiet eyes. There was no menace there, nothing but longing for the dead and charity for the living.

She pressed a hand upon her burning throat. "Give me drink," she gasped.

Her sister poured some of the rice-water into a smaller vessel. This she stirred gently with a stick, watching the ruined face of Onawa with the same patient eyes. Outside the hut a flight of snow birds whirred from side to side.

"When you have drunk you shall go forth," said Mary Iden deliberately.

"You shall seek to aid my enemy when he strives to strike down my husband."

Onawa gave a cry. In wondering over her sister's forgiveness she had forgotten La Salle.

"They may already have met," she muttered.

A stern smile crossed her sister's face.

"Can you not hear?" she whispered. "Yet you say you love the white priest. I have heard this long while the noise of sword striking sword. I listen without fear, knowing that no man can conquer my husband when no treachery hangs behind. Can you not hear the sounds of the fight?"

"My ears burn," cried Onawa. "I hear only the cold wind pa.s.sing among the pines."

"They fight!" exclaimed her sister triumphantly. "My Richard shall rest to-day."

"The water," gasped Onawa for the third time. "My throat is on fire."

"Drink and go forth."

Grasping the vessel in both hands, Onawa drained it to the dregs.