“How fast are we going?” she shouted.

“I don’t know.  Five miles an hour, perhaps!”

It sounded ridiculous; Agatha had felt as if they were flying.  Then she saw that skill was needed to keep the canoe before the wind and Thirlwell ran two risks.  If he let the craft fall off too far, the sail would swing across and she might be capsized by the shock; if he let her swerve to windward, the following wave would break on board and she would be swamped.  Thirlwell looked highly strung but very cool.  A mistake would have disastrous consequences; if he gave way to the strain for a moment, the canoe would sink.  But she knew he would not give way, and it was comforting to see that the half-breed shared her confidence.  He was, no doubt, a voyageur from his boyhood, but it was plain that he did not want to take the steering paddle.

Sometimes, when a savage gust screamed about them and whipped up the spray in clouds, Thirlwell let the sheet run round a pin; sometimes he sank the paddle deep and she saw its handle bend and the blood flush his face.  Drops of sweat ran down his forehead, but his glance was fixed and calm.  The strain on brain and muscle braced without exciting him; he seemed to accept it as something to which he was used.  He could be trusted in an emergency, and for some obscure reason she was glad to feel he was the man she had thought.

Then she watched the other canoe, which had dropped astern.  The Metis had set their sail, but she was not running well.  She swerved when she lifted with the waves and rolled until it looked as if she would capsize.  Now and then a sea broke over the gunwale and a crouching half-breed desperately threw out the water.  Another sat on a beam in the high stern and his pose was strangely tense.  But for all Agatha’s trust in Thirlwell, it was daunting to watch the laboring craft and the seas that threatened to swamp her.  They looked worse when one saw their hollow fronts and raging crests, and Agatha fixed her eyes ahead.

The haze was thinning and now and then the blurred outline of trees broke through; but one belt of forest looked like another and she speculated with some uneasiness about the chance of Thirlwell’s finding the river.  If he did not find it, they would run some risk, because the men could not paddle to windward and the canoes might be smashed on a steep, rocky beach.  They ran on, and sometimes the trees got plainer and sometimes vanished, but at length, when a savage gust rolled the haze away, Agatha saw an unbroken line of rocks and foam.  It looked very forbidding and she wondered what Thirlwell would do.

“Sit as far as you can to windward,” he shouted, and while she awkwardly obeyed the half-breed got up on the side of the canoe.

Agatha understood what this meant.  Thirlwell had missed the river mouth and meant to skirt the coast, but when he tried to do so the wind would be abeam and its power to heel the canoe largely increased.  So far, they had run before the gale, but to bring the craft’s side to it was a different thing.