For half an hour he had been inspired, and he had reached the climactic point in composition where almost everything he had written had been crossed out. He was not used to letters like this. Most of his epistles home, all these years, had confined themselves to: business good, hope you are all well, as is Yrs Truly.

But now he had painfully achieved:

You stay in Europe, see some more of London as well as Paris, etc. etc., as long as you want to. In this family we never did have much compulsion, us over the kids, you and me over each other, and if maybe it has not entirely worked out O.K. always I think children beginning to appreciate it and everything going to be swell. And hope you and I will start off again some day. But now it don’t seem to matter like it did when I used to talk about golden road to Samarkand and when we got near there, Istanbul, etc. etc., wasn’t the smell fierce in that market place! It seems to me now that it isn’t going where you want to that is freedom, but knowing that you can go.

That was all the high creative effort he could endure for the time. He wiped his brow, said, ‘Whew,’ killed a mosquito and crawled out through the netting to squat beside his son.

Howard observed, ‘Do you hear something like an outboard motor, ‘way off down the river? Wonder why they got one. Must be fierce job to tote it round the rapids.’

Yes. Fred could hear, like a rapidly beaten carpet, the exhaust of the motor. What tenderfoot would use it in these waters? He listened nervously. He felt that, unexplainably, it was coming for him.

The canoe, a big nineteen-foot freighter, had rounded a bend. Its small headlight, probably a camp flashlight fastened to the bow, illuminated the wrinkled, tumbling brown water, the wash of current about rocks sticking out of the river like the backs of seals, and ashore, the fallen and rotted log-cabin of a trapper, in a grove of willow and scrub pine. It seemed to be heading for their camp fire.

The two men by the tent muttered, ‘What’s the idea?’ and ‘Don’t believe there’s any bad Indians left along the river, but maybe if they’d got hold of some liquor . . .’

The canoe darted in to shore, well guided. They could make out a tall Indian in the bow, and behind him, nothing but a blurry mass. The blurry mass arose, crawled forward, edged past the Indian, stepped cautiously ashore. And the blurry mass was Hazel Cornplow, plus two blankets and man’s felt hat.

‘But where is Annabel? Where? Where?’ begged Howard.

‘I left her in Paris, dear, to study a little there. She’s such a darling. I’ve become so fond of her. Imagine! Once I was almost jealous of her! Silly. And the baby seems to be thriving. It’s the huskiest little mite you ever saw. My! He grabs your finger and almost breaks it in two. And his smile, I declare, it’s exactly like yours when you were a little tad, Howard.’