A huge drop of rain splashed on his hand, and behind him he heard sweeping over the forest tops the quickening march of the deluge.  There was no crash of thunder or flash of lightning when it broke.  Straight down, in an inundation, it came out of a sky thick enough to slit with a knife.  Carrigan drew in his head and shoulders and sniffed the sweet freshness of it.  He tried again to make out the light on the raft, but it was obliterated.

Mechanically he began taking off his clothes, and in a few moments he stood again at the window, naked.  Thunder and lightning had caught up with the rain, and in the flashes of fire Carrigan’s ghost-white face stared in the direction of the raft.  In his veins was at work an insistent and impelling desire.  Over there was St. Pierre, he was undoubtedly in the cabin, and something might happen if he, Dave Carrigan, took advantage of storm and gloom to go to the raft.

It was almost a presentiment that drew his bare head and shoulders out through the window, and every hunting instinct in him urged him to the adventure.  The stygian darkness was torn again by a flash of fire.  In it he saw the river and the vivid silhouette of the distant shore.  It would not be a difficult swim, and it would be good training for tomorrow.

Like a badger worming his way out of a hole a bit too small for him, Carrigan drew himself through the window.  A lightning flash caught him at the edge of the bateau, and he slunk back quickly against the cabin, with the thought that other eyes might be staring out into that same darkness.  In the pitch gloom that followed he lowered himself quietly into the river, thrust himself under water, and struck out for the opposite shore.

When he came to the surface again it was in the glare of another lightning flash.  He flung the water from his face, chose a point several hundred yards above the raft, and with quick, powerful strokes set out in its direction.  For ten minutes he quartered the current without raising his head.  Then he paused, floating unresistingly with the slow sweep of the river, and waited for another illumination.  When it came, he made out the tented raft scarcely a hundred yards away and a little below him.  In the next darkness he found the edge of it and dragged himself up on the mass of timbers.

The thunder had been rolling steadily westward, and David crouched low, hoping for one more flash to illumine the raft.  It came at last from a mass of inky cloud far to the west, so indistinct that it made only dim shadows out of the tents and shelters, but it was sufficient to give him direction.  Before its faint glare died out, he saw the deeper shadow of the cabin forward.

For many minutes he lay where he had dragged himself, without making a movement in its direction.  Nowhere about him could he see a sign of light, nor could he hear any sound of life.  St. Pierre’s people were evidently deep in slumber.