Ungava

CHAPTER ONE.

THE FOREST, AND THE LEADERS OF THE FOLORN-HOPE--A GOOD SHOT--A
CONSULTATION--AN ICE-FLOE, AND A NARROW CHANCE OF ESCAPE IN A SMALL WAY.

"Hallo! where are you!" shouted a voice that rang through the glades of
the forest like the blast of a silver trumpet, testifying to lungs of
leather and a throat of brass.

The ringing tones died away, and naught was heard save the rustling of
the leafy canopy overhead, as the young man, whose shout had thus rudely
disturbed the surrounding echoes, leaned on the muzzle of a long rifle,
and stood motionless as a statue, his right foot resting on the trunk of
a fallen tree, and his head bent slightly to one side, as if listening
for a reply. But no reply came. A squirrel ran down the trunk of a
neighbouring pine, and paused, with tail and ears erect, and its little
black eyes glittering as if with surprise at the temerity of him who so
recklessly dared to intrude upon and desecrate with his powerful voice
the deep solitudes of the wilderness. They stood so long thus that it
seemed as though the little animal and the man had been petrified by the
unwonted sound. If so, the spell was quickly broken. The loud report
of a fowling-piece was heard at a short distance. The squirrel
incontinently disappeared from the spot on which it stood, and almost
instantaneously reappeared on the topmost branch of a high tree; while
the young man gave a smile of satisfaction, threw the rifle over his
shoulder, and, turning round, strode rapidly away in the direction
whence the shot proceeded.

A few minutes' walk brought him to the banks of a little brook, by the
side of which, on the projecting root of a tree, sat a man, with a dead
goose at his feet and a fowling-piece by his side.