The two or three minutes of excitement in the boiling waters of the Holy Ghost had acted like medicine on Carrigan.  It seemed to him that something had given way in his head, relieving him of an oppression that had been like an iron hoop drawn tightly about his skull.  He did not want Bateese to suspect this change in him, and he slouched lower against the dunnage-pack with his eyes still on the girl.  He was finding it increasingly difficult to keep from looking at her.  She had resumed her paddling, and Bateese was putting mighty efforts in his strokes now, so that the narrow, birchbark canoe shot like an arrow with the down-sweeping current of the river.  A few hundred yards below was a twist in the channel, and as the canoe rounded this, taking the shoreward curve with dizzying swiftness, a wide, still straight-water lay ahead.  And far down this Carrigan saw the glow of fires.

The forest had drawn back from the river, leaving in its place a broken tundra of rock and shale and a wide strip of black sand along the edge of the stream itself.  Carrigan knew what it was—­an upheaval of the tar-sand country so common still farther north, the beginning of that treasure of the earth which would some day make the top of the American continent one of the Eldorados of the world.  The fires drew nearer, and suddenly the still night was broken by the wild chanting of men.  David heard behind him a choking note in the throat of Bateese.  A soft word came from the lips of the girl, and it seemed to Carrigan that her head was held higher in the moon glow.  The chant increased in volume, a rhythmic, throbbing, savage music that for a hundred and fifty years had come from the throats of men along the Three Rivers.  It thrilled Carrigan as they bore down upon it.  It was not song as civilization would have counted song.  It was like an explosion, an exultation of human voice unchained, ebullient with the love of life, savage in its good-humor.  It was le GAITE de coeur of the rivermen, who thought and sang as their forefathers did in the days of Radisson and good Prince Rupert; it was their merriment, their exhilaration, their freedom and optimism, reaching up to the farthest stars.  In that song men were straining their vocal muscles, shouting to beat out their nearest neighbor, bellowing like bulls in a frenzy of sudden fun.  And then, as suddenly as it had risen in the night, the clamor of voices died away.  A single shout came up the river.  Carrigan thought he heard a low rumble of laughter.  A tin pan banged against another.  A dog howled.  The flat of an oar played a tattoo for a moment on the bottom of a boat.  Then one last yell from a single throat—­and the night was silent again.