The Call of the North (PDF, MOBI, EPUB, FB2, TEXT)
eir companions.
Soon all eyes turned curiously toward the canoe. A hum of
low-voiced comment took the place of louder delight.
The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to
his feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of
movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he
reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale
just above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead
silence fell. Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like
the slow agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at
last they formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre was the
bow of the canoe and the stranger from Kettle Portage. The men
scowled, the women regarded him with a half-fearful curiosity.
Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric
polarity. The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained
hostility. The desperation she had thought to read but a moment
before had vanished utterly, leaving in its
