He loved the brief glimpses he caught of her face in the match-glow, and twice he deliberately wasted the tiny flares that he might hold the vision of her a little longer.
At last he began to feel the pulse of a current against his paddle, and soon after that the star-mist began filtering through the thinning tree-tops again, so that he knew they were almost through the swamp.
Another half-hour and they were free of it, with a clear sky overhead and the cheering song of running water on both sides of them.
Nada sat up, and it was now so light that he could see the soft shimmer of her hair in the starlight.

He also saw a pretty little grimace in her face, even as she smiled at him.
"I--I can't move," she exclaimed.

"UGH! my feet are asleep--" "We'll go ashore and stretch ourselves," said McKay, who had looked at his watch in the light of the last match.

"We've two hours the start of Breault, and there is no other canoe." He began watching the shore closely, and it was not long before he made out the white smoothness of a sandbar on their right.

Here they landed and for half an hour rested their cramped limbs.
Then they went on, and in his heart McKay blessed the deep swamp that lay between them and Breault.
"I don't think he can make it without a canoe, even if he guesses we went this way," he explained to Nada.