Every ten minutes the one who rode exchanged place with one of the runners, so that there were intervals of rest for each two times an hour.

Quickly the red glow over the southwestern forests faded away; the gloom grew thicker; far ahead, like an endless sheet losing itself in a distant smother of blackness, stretched the ice and snow of Lake Nipigon.

There was no tree, no rock for guidance over the trackless waste, yet never for an instant did Mukoki or Wabigoon falter.

The stars began burning brilliantly in the sky; far away the red edge of the moon rose over this world of ice and snow and forest, throbbing and palpitating like a bursting ball of fire, as one sees it now and then in the glory of the great northern night.
Tirelessly, mile after mile, hour after hour, broken only by the short intervals of rest on the sledge, continued the race across Lake Nipigon.

The moon rose higher; the blood in it paled to the crimson glow of the moose flower, and silvered as it climbed into the sky, until the orb hung like a great golden-white disk.