Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along the
coast to Port Dupre, a ride from headland to headland across the frozen
bays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelped
as they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered and
called for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but
across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komatic
chased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and
shot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped to
their noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarry
behind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea
beyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they
breathed as a sort of joyous hunger.
One day their teams insisted upon racing.
Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and her
sledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish,
but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost
level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously.
"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?"
Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack of
whimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know,
that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they met
overhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In the
lane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"...