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The men threw every ounce of power into each stroke, the voice of the boatswain blending with their efforts like an intoned benediction, and the treacly sea foamed under the prow into drifted snow which ran merrily in their wake.
Who that beholds the gilded vessel gliding in gallant trim "youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm;" ever at that instant thought of barnacles? The imagination is disgusted by the anti-climax; and of all species of the bathos, the sinking from visionary happiness to sober reality is that from which human nature is most averse.
A figure in a long white robe sat astern, tiller ropes in hand; two half-naked blacks far up towards the prow manipulated a pair of tremendous sweeps. With a vast heaving, jabbering, and shouting, our boat disengaged itself from the swarm of other craft.
The oars are dipped farther back, and as the blade feels the water holding it in the hollow, the lissom wood bends to its work. Before the cutwater a wave rises, and, repulsed, rushes outwards. At each stroke, as the weight swings towards the prow, there is just the least faint depression at its stem as the boat travels.
Sometimes we would enter a lead of open water and proceed for a mile or two without hindrance; sometimes we would come to big sheets of thin ice which broke easily as our iron-shod prow struck them, and sometimes even a thin sheet would resist all our attempts to break it; sometimes we would push big floes with comparative ease and sometimes a small floe would bar our passage with such obstinacy that one would almost believe it possessed of an evil spirit; sometimes we passed through acres of sludgy sodden ice which hissed as it swept along the side, and sometimes the hissing ceased seemingly without rhyme or reason, and we found our screw churning the sea without any effect.
Jimmy shipped the paddle, and allowed the canoe to drift. The ripple of the water against the prow sounded clear and thin in the stillness. The world seemed asleep. The sun blazed down, turning the water to flame. The air was hot, with the damp electrical heat that heralds a thunderstorm. Molly's face looked small and cool in the shade of her big hat.
A hunting-sled, however, is usually hauled by man by means of a looped strap, or tump-line, with a broad centre which goes over the hunter's shoulders or head, and has its two ends fastened to the first cross-bar below the prow.
The white whales floundering in the Bay of Tadoussac, and the wild duck diving as the foaming prow drew near, there was no life but these in all that watery solitude, twenty miles from shore to shore. The ship was from Honfleur, and was commanded by Samuel de Champlain. He was the AEneas of a destined people, and in her womb lay the embryo life of Canada.
Then Paul noticed that the prow of their canoe was not turned toward the island, but was bearing steadily toward the north end of the lake, leaving the island well to the left. He glanced at Jim Hart, and the long man laughed low, but with deep satisfaction. "Don't you see, Paul," he said, "that we kain't go to the islan' an' show to them that we've been livin' thar?
"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into subordinates." MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and unaccountable eagerness. "Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, "go on!" "Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
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