what was all portages an' we unloaded an' loaded up again fire times." And then, when a short month was done, they came to the portage on the Height of Land, with rivers and ground falling eastward into Hudson Bay.
They camped on Height of Land portage that night; round a fire made of driftwood worn and light from long beating on these barren shores, and of moss which Dick searched for, and, knowing well the use of, brought back to the fire in great cakes. It gave out a musty smell to the night, and Myers declared that it made the tea taste. But the flavour was good to Dick, and the wild night blowing up dark on the naked wastes about him was good. For the belief was quickening in his mind—day by day, and hour by hour—that when he touched to the haunts of men again he would find Ducane.
Through all those miles from Fort Resolution, which were only about three hundred and seventy on the survey map, although the portages had piled them up to almost as many more, Dick's mind held sleeplessly to the thought of Ducane. While his senses exulted in the smell of the rivers; in the deep-trod spore of deer on the shores; in the high, white stars that strung themselves across the curve of the great sky; in the winds that blew out of the unbreathed spaces round the Pole, his brain was still planning the capture of Ducane. By force of will he had thrust Jennifer into the background. It maddened him to think of her, and therefore he would not think of her.
He took his skill in his work for his fetish again, finding the very salt of life in it. The try-pit wherein he had been welded, with strong blows and white-hot searing fire, had not left him with much mercy towards himself or other men. Law, duty, discipline had meant practically nothing to him until he saw the beauty of them in Tempest's hands. Now, even through his pain in connection with this man, it appealed to his pride and his humour to know that he, the morally-derelict, had whipped Tempest back into the straight path, and that Tempest was treading it, faithfully, if not with the glorying delight of old.
In some way which he did not try to fathom, this knowledge awakened Dick's understanding of what he owed the
