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When it seemed to Norman and Roy that there would be no end to the long delay, Colonel Howell also reappeared. With a nod of his head to all, he spoke quickly in the Cree language to his steersmen. Old Moosetooth grunted a command and the men ran to the hawsers holding the scows against the current.
Colonel Howell and his friends took the sergeant's hand in turn and then sprang aboard the boat. While the two steersmen lifted their own hats and grunted with the only show of animation that had lit their faces, the ceremony of inspection was over and the long voyage was officially begun.
Almost instantly, those on the fast-receding shore heard from the boat the soft notes of some one in song. Under the conditions, whatever the words and the air, they floated back as many of those left behind had heard the old voyageur take his leave. But this song came from neither of the weatherworn steersmen, nor from the stolid members of their half-breed crew.
Their course, however, was irregular, and destitute of steersmen they arrived singly and separately at the floating works, where they continued hanging or were dashed off sidewise on the shore. The foremost powder-ships, which were intended to set fire to the floating works, were cast, by the force of a squall which arose at that instant, on the Flemish coast.
Vescerentur followed by the acc. For the imp. subj. cf. note 21: ut concupiscerent. Amissis navibus. This is regarded by some as proof that all the steersmen were slain or escaped. Dr. answers, that it may refer only to the two ships that were without steersmen. Suevis. Mox, subsequently, some having escaped the Suevi. Per commercia. In trade, cf. same in 39. Nostram ripam.
While this was going on, the principal guides and steersmen crowded round our three travellers, and plied them with questions; for it was so unusual to meet with strangers in that far-off wilderness, that a chance meeting of this kind was regarded as quite an important event.
The ship was slowly turning on her side, like some huge and stricken dumb animal laying itself down to die. "Yes," said the captain with a bitter laugh, to the two steersmen who had come a second time to the threshold of the wheel-house, "yes, you can go." He turned to the engine-room telegraph and rang the "Stand by." But there was no answer. The engineers had come on deck.
In them chance plays the part of fate. "Blind accident and blundering mishap 'such a mistake, says one of the criminals, 'as I have often seen in a play' are the steersmen of their fortunes and the doomsmen of their deeds." His characters are gloomy; meditative and philosophic murderers, cynical informers, sad and loving women, and they are all themselves in every phrase that they utter.
They drifted into these dangerous shoals in spite of the occasional efforts of intelligent steersmen; and it would indeed have needed a higher political intelligence than was then and there available, to have fully divined the direction of the drift and the dangers ahead of them.
"Davy says the Ha'r Buyer's sculp hangs by the lock, boys," he shouted, pointing at the sun. The word was cried from boat to boat, and we could see the men pointing upwards and laughing. And then, as the light began to grow, we were in the midst of the tumbling waters, the steersmen straining now right, now left, to keep the prows in the smooth reaches between rock and bar.
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