As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be recovered.
"A third attempt would have been useless," Corliss said, in a dry, cracked whisper.
And Frona answered, "Yes; our hearts would have surely broken." Life, and the pleasant camp-fire, and the quiet rest in the noonday shade, came back to Tommy as the shore drew near, and more than all, blessed Toronto, its houses that never moved, and its jostling streets.
Each time his head sank forward and he reached out and clutched the water with his paddle, the streets enlarged, as though gazing through a telescope and adjusting to a nearer focus.

And each time the paddle drove clear and his head was raised, the island bounded forward.

His head sank, and the streets were of the size of life; it raised, and Jacob Welse and the two men stood on the bank three lengths away.
"Dinna I tell ye!" he shouted to them, triumphantly.
But Frona jerked the canoe parallel with the bank, and he found himself gazing at the long up-stream stretch.

He arrested a stroke midway, and his paddle clattered in the bottom.
"Pick it up!" Corliss's voice was sharp and relentless.
"I'll do naething o' the kind." He turned a rebellious face on his tormentor, and ground his teeth in anger and disappointment.
The canoe was drifting down with the current, and Frona merely held it in place.

Corliss crawled forward on his knees.
"I don't want to hurt you, Tommy," he said in a low, tense voice, "so.