Three figures loomed through the snowy darkness, white and silent as the snow itself--vague as phantoms in mist--pointing at us like wraiths of death--spirit hunters incarnate of that vast wilderness riding the riotous storm over land and sea. One swung a weapon aloft. There was the scream as of a woman's cry--and the shrieking wind had swept the snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when the combing billows of drift passed, the apparition had faded. We four stood alone staring in space with strange questionings.
"Egad!" gasped Radisson, "I don't mind when the wind howls like a wolf, but when it takes to the death-scream, with snow like the skirts of a shroud----"
"May the Lord have mercy on us!" muttered La Chesnaye, crossing himself. "It is sign of death! That was a woman's figure. It is sign of death!"
"Sign of death!" raged Ben, stamping his impotent fury, "'tis him--'tis him! The Judas Iscariot, and he's left us to die so that he may steal the furs!"
"Hold quiet!" ordered M. Radisson. "Look, you rantipole--who is that?"
'Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emerging from the gloom of the snow like a ghost. By signs and Indian words the fellow offered to guide us back to our Habitation.
We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne flitting away like a shadow, as he had come. And the first thing we did was to hold a service of thanks to God Almighty for our deliverance.
[1] See Radisson's account--Prince Society (1885), Boston--Bodleian Library.--Canadian Archives, 1895-'96.
Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, muffling the sea, day after day fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of a branch.
No east, no west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness, billowing snow, and a silence as of death. It was the cold, silent, mystic, white world of northern winter.
At one moment the fort door flings wide with a rush of frost like smoke clouds, and in stamps Godefroy, shaking snow off with boisterous noise and vowing by the saints that the drifts are as high as the St. Pierre's deck. M. Groseillers orders the rascal to shut the door; but bare has the latch clicked when young Jean whisks in, tossing snow from cap and gauntlets like a clipper shaking a reef to the spray, and declares that the snow is already level with the fort walls.