Summary

This chapter shifts back to Xavier's first person narration. He awakens to the sound of Niska's paddling and after looking around at the river bank, he tells her to stop. This is where the great fire took place and where he and Elijah had found a bull moose that had roast in the fire. Xavier mentions to that when he and Elijah reached this place he had thought that he had crossed over into the world of the white man. While looking at how the bush had grown back from the fire, Xavier thinks to himself that fire is sometimes good for the land but he thinks that the earth in Ypres and Somme is too wrecked by warfare to ever recover. He then lays back in the canoe and his memory takes him back to when he and Elijah first came upon...