For sixteen hours the bateau had traveled
steadily, and it could not have made less than sixty miles as the
river ran. The raft, David figured, had not traveled a third of
the distance.
The fact that the bateau's progress would bring him to Chateau
Boulain many days, and perhaps weeks, before Black Roger and
Marie-Anne could arrive on the raft did not check his enthusiasm.
It was this interval between their arrivals which held a great
speculative promise for him. In that time, if his efficiency had
not entirely deserted him, he would surely make discoveries of
importance.
Day after day the journey continued without rest. On the fourth
day after leaving Fort McMurray it was Joe Clamart who brought in
David's supper, and he grunted a protest at his long hours of
muscle-breaking labor at the sweeps. When David questioned him he
shrugged his shoulders, and his mouth closed tight as a clam. On
the fifth, the bateau crossed the narrow western neck of Lake
Athabasca, slipping past Chipewyan in the night, and on the sixth
it entered the Slave River. It was the fourteenth day when the
bateau entered Great Slave Lake, and the second night after that,
as dusk gathered thickly between the forest walls of the
Yellowknife, David knew that at last they had reached the mouth of
the dark and mysterious stream which led to the still more
mysterious domain of Black Roger Audemard.
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