"Why couldna she bide a
bit?"
Frona caught his words and flung a laugh defiantly. Vance darted a
glance over his shoulder to her, and her smile was witchery. Her cap,
perched precariously, was sliding off, while her flying hair, aglint in
the sunshine, framed her face as he had seen it framed on the Dyea
Trail.
"How I should like to sing, if it weren't for saving one's breath. Say
the 'Song of the Sword,' or the 'Anchor Chanty.'"
"Or the 'First Chanty,'" Corliss answered. "'Mine was the woman,
darkling I found her,'" he hummed, significantly.
She flashed her paddle into the water on the opposite side in order to
go wide of a jagged cake, and seemed not to hear. "I could go on this
way forever."
"And I," Corliss affirmed, warmly.
But she refused to take notice, saying, instead, "Vance, do you know
I'm glad we're friends?"
"No fault of mine we're not more."
"You're losing your stroke, sir," she reprimanded; and he bent silently
to the work.
La Bijou was driving against the current at an angle of forty-five
degrees, and her resultant course was a line at right angles to the
river. Thus, she would tap the western bank directly opposite the
starting-point, where she could work up-stream in the slacker flood.
But a mile of indented shore, and then a hundred yards of bluffs rising
precipitously from out a stiff current would still lie between them and
the man to be rescued.
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