Here he saw
nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since
dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette
and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable
discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the
weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did
not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette
looked down on him from the top of the bank.
"Well, we here, M'sieu Thompson," he said.
"What?" Thompson roused himself. "Here? Where is the village?"
Breyette waved a hand upstream.
"She's 'roun' de nex' bend," said he. "Two-three hundred yard. Dees
w'ere de meeshonaire have hees cabanne."
Thompson could not doubt Breyette's statement. He recalled now that Mike
had once told him the mission quarters were built a little apart from
the village. But he peered up through the screen of birch and willow
with a swift wave of misgiving. The forest enclosed him like the blank
walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from
the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have
told why he felt that strange form of depression.
Pages:
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51