Since then Philip had pointed his canoe straight UP the Dubawnt waterways, and was a hundred and twenty miles nearer to civilization.

He had been through these waterways twice before, and he knew that there was not a white man within a hundred and fifty miles of him.

And as for a white woman-- Weyman stopped his paddling where there was no current, and leaned back in his canoe for a breathing space, and to fill his pipe.

A WHITE WOMAN! Would he stare at her like a fool when he saw her again for the first time?
Eighteen months ago he had seen a white woman over at Fort Churchill--the English clerk's wife, thirty, with a sprinkle of gray in her blond hair, and pale blue eyes.

Fresh from the Garden of Eden, he had wondered why the half-dozen white men over there regarded her as they did.