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He mayn't live till morning. They say he looks broken-hearted. He'll throw himself into that cold lake to-night, maybe and the leeches the black worms oo! or else he'll kill himself with that ugly pistol." It was in vain that Isabel talked to her, in vain that she tried to argue with a cataract of feeling. It was rowing against Niagara with a canoe-paddle. Then he would hand her the notes.
Of rowing he knew nothing at all, nor could Tilda help him. He could but lift the clumsy oar, and ply it with the little skill he had learnt on the voyage down Avon, as one plies a canoe-paddle. Even to do this he was forced to stand erect in the stern-sheets: if he sat, the awkward pole would over-weight his strength completely.
He thought it must be the sound of a canoe-paddle. Could anybody row against such a torrent? But he distinctly heard the plashing, and it was below him. Even Katy roused herself to listen, and strained her eyes against the blackness of the night to discover what it might be. It did not grow any nearer. It did not retreat.
Sidonie lingered a moment at her desk, putting it in order; Claude, taking all the time he could, was getting his canoe-paddle from a corner; Crébiche was waiting, by the master's command, to repair some default of the day; and Toutou, outside on his knees in the grass catching grasshoppers, was tarrying for his sister; when four or five of the village's best men came slowly and hesitatingly in.
If we only pull a couple of hours afore the sun gets hot, I think we'll be in no danger o' meetin' them any more. So let's set to, little Will'm! Another spell, and then you can rest as long's you have a mind to." The sailor seated himself close to the edge of the raft, and dropped his oar-blade in the water, using it after the fashion of a canoe-paddle.
But the human presence was much; and once, when just ahead of him he espied a young, sunbonneted woman crouching in the pouring sunshine beyond the sod of the bayou's bank, itself but a few inches above the level of the stream, on a little pier of one plank pushed out among the flags and reeds, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle, he stopped the dip of his canoe-paddle, and gazed with growing trepidation and slackening speed.
Being invited by them to a feast, and told that he must not decline, he took his place among a party of two hundred, squatted about four large kettles full of fish, bear's meat, pease, and plums, mixed with figs, raisins, and biscuit procured at great cost from the traders, the whole boiled together and well stirred with a canoe-paddle.
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