Adventure, November 1915 — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_ sharp-edged hoops. 124 ° WITH a celerity that proved they SS had been forewarned of their possi- ne ble need, the revelers sprang up from about ele fire and with drunken . shouts rushed upon Dubawni. The latter, on the instant that Helbaud opened his mouth, jumped viciously at the Arctic Fur leader, but he never reached him, for Helbaud’s half-muddled clerks, guides, post-keepers and interpreters plunged in a _ body between, and Dubawni was enveloped in a twisted knot of arms and legs that seemed like the many tentacles of a sea- demon holding him. As fast as he wriggled out of the crook of a leg or arm, as fast as he ripped off one de- taining hand or toe, more fastened upon him. He smote to the right, to the left, straight ahead and battered to the rear with his elbows, brought feet, knees and head into play, and it seemed for an instant, so mighty was the squat, broad-shouldered frame of him, that he would break clear. “Par Dieul”’ screeched Helbaud. the dozen of you not hold him? i”? The sentence ended in a grunt, for the flying body of Masita smote him full in the chest. Like a lynx she had leaped, and like a lynx she clung, clawing, fighting, tearing “Can Must Helbaud’s face. “Break loose!” she panted. “Mon Dieul In the name of my mother break loose! I can hold off this one!” Dubawni responded .with a convulsive : leap that tore away the detaining hands. In another second he would have won from Helbaud’s officers, but as he cleared their outer ranks he met the rush of the hundreds of roisterers who had sprung from the fire. He went down under a human wave, and he came up stiffly held in scores of hands which bore him as they would have borne a crotched tree-trunk. “To the water’s edge yonder, as I di- rected you!’ Helbaud roared out, strug- gling to pinion the hands that lacerated his powdered face and ripped his bristling mus- tache to a scrubby brush. ‘‘To the water- line! And you, you little cat, must I squeeze the breath out of you before you quit?” Struggling fiercely but impotently, Ma- sita felt Helbaud’s arms press on hers like She was half lying, half leaning against his breast, and she could not get room to strike or twist. Adventure “You little cat! Be still and I shall not hurt you. Ha! You give up, eh? Then stand up and do not spring like a wildcat at my face again. What will Father Boc- cairre say to that? You will have to show gentler ways before him. “He should be here. I wonder what in perdition keeps that Francois! But Du- bawni! Look! It is thus with all who struggle against me. And you, will you see him swing in air as carrion for the crows? I think not, little spitfire. You must tell him to change his mind. Come down to the water’s edge!” Panting, half sobbing with rage and pain and impotence and despair, Masita could not resist his drawing her by the arm after the motley horde who arried her father like a toy in their hands. “Mon Dieul” she breathed to herself. “‘What has happened Frangois?” She glanced despairingly toward mid- river, but there was only the black, swift- gliding water with the half-moon of bloody firelight lying on it like a stain. She listened, but riverward there was no sound except the brawling of that same black water, ceaselessly flowing by in the impenetrable shadow beyond the bloody stain. And landward there was likewise no movement nor sound except in the bare space of the rock-beach. Beyond the rock- beach the forest slept again as it had slept before men came to shatter its nirvanic calm with their greed and lust and brawling and killing. It offered no succor in the dis- putes or oppressions of men. Inscrutable it remained whether they won or lost, lived or died, and across its azoic silence, profane as a bomb in a cathedral, rang the Arctic Fur men’s thunderous refrain: And there’s no law, no law, no law past Quebec! CHAPTER XIV / THE CALL OF THE CURLEW | Bees a lone, leaning spruce at the end of the flat rock-beach Dubawni’s captors stopped and set the free-trader, still stiffly held, upon his feet. “The: rope!” ordered Helbaud sharply. “Put on the rope!” — Some of the mob dragged forth a coil of heavy rope which had been unostenta- tiously wound around one of the rum ECORMICLOO© S (C@ s