their hawsers with the tug of the after-swell. The 'Rocket' drew deeper than any other there; but she, like the rest, was bluff and broad of beam and flat of keel, so that the ice might lift her and not crush her in its mighty grip. Naked and mournful they looked with their bare poles stabbing the sky and their sheets singing in the wind. The white shaving of smoke from the 'Rocket's' stack showed that she had not chosen her winter quarters yet, and as Dick watched her, Baxter's boat dropped away from her side and drove shoreward with the men swinging low to the oars. Dick went down to the very lip of the water and looked. There was no woman in the boat. But that told nothing. It was not Baxter who was to take Grange's Andree from her stronghold.
The boat swung near, dipping deep in the restless swell. Baxter stepped out, answering the question in Dick's eyes.
"She's there," he said briefly. Then he took Dick a few steps aside. "She's there," he said again, and his voice was uneven. "Heriot, you never told me she'd turned out the lovely thing she is. I remember her thin and brown, and even then—Well, she's got them all crazy for her, of course. And they can't do anything with her, not a man of 'em. She goes around with a knife in her belt, and they dassent touch her. Have it into them like light, she would, and they know it. My! And that makes them the crazier. She is a beauty, and this is a bitter, cruel thing you've got to do, Heriot. A bitter cruel thing."
Dick smiled a little. He knew so well that wild animal indifference and temper and defiance in Andree. And she carried a knife, did she? Would she try to use it on him, or would she come to him as before, with her hands out and the gladness in her eyes?
"Jack Scott's clean off his head," said Baxter. "He wanted to take her out the worst way, but the ice caught him. I'll go along with you now, Heriot, for she'll be a handful of herself if she don't want to come, and I wouldn't answer for Scott the way he is. You've got your warrant, supposin' he wants to see it? It's his ship, you know. Well—get in. Push her off, Selkirk; we're goin' out to the 'Rocket' again."
"Does he know she's wanted?"
