“We shall not arrive too soon, my friend,” rejoined the captain of the voyageurs, casting an eye back across the great lake, which lay black and ominous under a threatening sky, the sweep and swirl of its white caps ever racing hard after the frail craft, as though eager to break through its paper sides and tear away the human beings who thus fled on so lightly.

This boat, mysteriously appearing as though it were some spirit craft railed from the ancient deeps, was far from the beginning of its wild journey.  Wide as the eye might reach, there arose no fleck of snowy canvas, nor showed the dark line of any similar craft propelled by oar or paddle.  They were alone, these travelers.  Before them, at the entrance of the wide arm of the great lake Michiganon, lay the point even at that early day known as the Door of the West, the beginning of the winding water-way which led on into the interior of that West, then so alluring and unknown.  The eyes of all were fixed on the low, white-fronted bluffs, crowned by dark forest growth, which guarded the bay at either hand.  This spot, so wild, so remote, so significant—­it was home for these voyageurs as much as any; as much, too, for Law and the woman who lay back, pale-faced and wide-eyed, among the bales in the great canoe.

In time the graceful craft approached the beach, on which the long waves rolled and curled, now gently, now with imposing force.  With the water yet half-leg deep, Du Mesne and two of the paddlers sprang bodily overboard and held the boat back from the pebbles, so that its tender shell might not be damaged.  Law himself was as soon as they in the water, and he waded back along the gunwale until he reached the stern, the water nearly up to his hips.  Reaching out his arms, he picked up Mary Connynge from her seat and carried her dry-shod ashore, bending down to catch some whispered word.  Not so gallant was Du Mesne, the leader of the voyageurs.  He uttered a few short words of semi-command to the Indian woman, who had been seated on the floor of the canoe, and she, without protest, crawled forward over the thwarts and the heaped bundles until she reached the bow, and then went ankle deep into the creaming flood.  The great canoe, left empty and anchored safe from the pebbles of the beach, tossed light as a cork on the incoming waves.

A little open space was quickly found at the edge of the cove in which the disembarkation was made, and here Du Mesne and his followers soon kicked away the twigs and leveled out a smooth place upon the grass.  Each man produced from his belt a broad-bladed knife, and for the moment disappeared in the deep fringe of evergreens which lined the shore.  Fairly in the twinkling of an eye a rude frame of bent poles was made, above which were spread strips of unrolled birch bark from the cargo of the canoe.  Over the spaces left uncovered by the supply of bark sheets there were laid down long mats made by Indian hands