into the daily head-wind with easy swiftness, whereas R.M. and myself in our high-prowed craft found progress slow and steering a heavy toil. The wind caught our big bows like a sail. Gallup, moreover, sizing us up as English greenhorns, expected good food and lots of whisky, and, getting neither, vented his spleen on us as best he could. His natural evil temper grew steadily worse. There were several ways in which he could have revenge. He used them all. By "losing his way" down branch streams he made the journey last eight days instead of five, yet he went so fast in his neat-nosed craft that it was all R.M. and I could do to keep him in sight at all. The sunlight flashing on his paddle two or three miles ahead, the canoe itself a mere dark speck in the dazzle of water, was all we usually had to guide us. Paxton, weary, much thinner than he had been, useless as a paddler, lay in the bottom of the canoe, leaving all the work to Gallup. And Gallup did it, even with this dead freight against him. To our injunction to make the fellow go slower, his "Ouch! Ouch!" was quite ineffective. I was careful to keep the provisions in my own canoe, so that we could not lose him altogether, and he was faithful in one thing, that he waited for us at the rapids and portages.
What did it matter? The head wind held steadily day after day, blowing from the north-west through a cloudless sky. Everything sparkled, the air was champagne; such a winding river of blue I had never seen before. Every tree wore little fingers of bright fresh green. There was exhilaration and wonder at every turn. Burned by the hot sun and wet by the flying spray, our hands swelled till the knuckles disappeared, then cracked between the joints till they bled.
I steered. R.M. sat in the bows. Paddling hour after hour against the wind became a mechanical business the muscles attended to automatically. The mind was free to roam. The loneliness was magical, for it was a peopled loneliness. A start at dawn, half an hour for lunch, and
camp at sunset was the day's routine. Usually we were
