And _what_ a dwelling Angus Macdonald's house had become!
"What a home-coming!" exclaimed Ian, thinking, in the bitterness of his
soul, of Elsie as well as the house.
"It's awful!" said Victor, with a sympathetic glance at his friend.
The desolation was indeed complete--symbolic, Ian thought, of the
condition of his own heart. Besides having eight or ten feet of water
on its walls, all the lower rooms were utterly wrecked. A heavy log,
ready for the saw-pit, had come down with the torrent, and, taking upon
it the duties of a battering-ram, had charged the parlour window. Not
only did it carry this bodily into the room, but it forced it into the
passage beyond, where it jammed and stuck fast. The butt of this log,
projecting several feet from the window, had intercepted straw and hay
to such an extent that a miniature stack was formed, in which all sorts
of light articles of furniture and debris had been caught. With the
stubborn determination of a Celt, Angus had refused to remove his main
door, which faced up stream. The result was that the flood removed it
for him with a degree of violence that had induced Miss Martha to
exclaim, "The house is goin' at last!" to which Angus had replied
doggedly.
"Let it go. It will hef to go some day, whatever." But the house had
not gone. It was only, as we have said, the main door which went, and
was hurled through the passage into the kitchen, where it charged the
back door, wrenched it off, and accompanied it to Lake Winnipeg with a
tail of miscellaneous cooking utensils. Only shreds of the back windows
remained hanging by twisted hinges to the frames, telling with mute
eloquence of heroic resistance to the last gasp. Whatever had not been
removed by Angus from the ground-floor of his house had been swept out
at the windows and doorways, as with the besom of destruction.
Paddling in through the front door, the two friends disembarked from
their canoe on the staircase, and ascended to the upper floor. Here
everything betokened a hurried departure. Furniture was strewn about in
disorder; articles of clothing were scattered broadcast, as if Miss
Martha and her maid had been summoned to sudden departure, and had
rummaged recklessly for their most cherished possessions. In the
principal bedroom, on the best bed, stood Beauty in her native
ugliness--the only living thing left to do the honours of the house.
"What a brute!" exclaimed Victor.
He seized a saucepan that stood handy, and hurled it at her. Beauty was
equal to the emergency; she leaped up, allowed the pan to pass under
her, fled shrieking through the window, and took refuge on the top of
the house.
"I'm glad you missed her, Vic," said Ian, in a slightly reproachful
tone; "she's an old friend of the family, and a harmless thing."
"Miss Trim would not agree with you in your opinion of her," returned
Victor, with a laugh; "but I'm also glad I missed her. It was a sudden
impulse that I couldn't resist, and you know a fellow is scarcely
accountable for his impulses."
"True; not for his impulses, but he is very accountable for actions
resulting from impulse. If you had killed Beauty I should have had an
irresistible impulse to pitch you over the window. If I were to do so
in such circumstances would you hold me unaccountable?"
"I'm not sure," said Victor, with a grim smile. "But we'll change the
subject; I don't like argument when I'm likely to get the worst of it.
It's plain that you can do no good here, I therefore propose that we
return to Willow Creek, take the small boat, and go up to the Mountain
to see father, taking Tony and Petawanaquat along with us."
Ian shook his head with an expression of sadness that surprised his
friend.
"No, Vic, no; my work with you in search of your brother is done, my
father's home now claims my chief care. You are wrong in saying I can
do no good here; look round at the wreck and mess. There is much to be
done. Now I tell you what I'll do. I'll remain here all day and all
night too. You will return home and send me the little punt, if it can
be spared, for I shall have to row to the outhouses a good deal, and
round the house too. As you see, nothing can be done without a craft of
some sort. Send Peegwish with it, without Wildcat, she would only be in
the way."
Victor tried to induce his friend to change his mind, but Ian was
immoveable. He therefore returned to Willow Creek in the canoe, and
sent Peegwish back with the punt--a tub-like little boat, with two small
oars or sculls.
Left alone, Ian Macdonald leaned on the sill of a window in the gable of
the house, from which he could see the house at Willow Creek, and sighed
deeply. "So then," he thought, "all my hopes are blighted; my air
castles are knocked down, my bear-hunting has been in vain; Elsie is
engaged to Louis Lambert!"
There was no bitterness in his heart now, only a feeling of profound
loneliness. As he raised himself with another sigh, the top of the
window tipped off his cap, which fell into the water. He cared little
for the loss, but stood watching the cap as it floated slowly away with
the current, and compared its receding form with his dwindling joys.
The current, which was not strong there, carried the cap straight to the
knoll several hundred yards off, on which stood the smoking-box of old
Sam Ravenshaw, and stranded it there.
The incident turned the poor youth's mind back to brighter days and
other scenes, especially to the last conversation which he had held with
the owner of the smoking-box. He was mentally enacting that scene over
again when Peegwish pulled up to the house and passed under the window.
"Come along, you old savage," said Ian, with a good-humoured nod; "I
want your help. Go round to the front and shove into the passage. The
doorway's wide enough."
Peegwish, who was fond of Ian, replied to the nod with a hideous smile.
In a few minutes the two were busily engaged in collecting loose
articles and bringing things in general into order.
While thus engaged they were interrupted by Beauty cackling and
screaming with tremendous violence. She was evidently in distress.
Running up a ladder leading to the garret, Ian found that the creature
had forced her way through a hole in the roof, and entangled herself in
a mass of cordage thrown in a heap along with several stout ropes, or
cables, which Angus had recently bought with the intention of rigging
out a sloop with which to traverse the great Lake Winnipeg. Setting the
hen free, Ian returned to his work.
A few minutes later he was again arrested suddenly, but not by Beauty
this time. He became aware of a peculiar sensation which caused a
slight throbbing of his heart, and clearly proved that, although
lacerated, or even severely crushed, that organ was not quite broken!
He looked round at Peegwish, and beheld that savage glaring, as if
transfixed, with mouth and eyes equally wide open.
"Did you feel _that_, Peegwish?"
Yes, Peegwish had felt "that," and said so in an awful whisper without
moving.
"Surely--no, it cannot have been the--"
He stopped short. There was a low, grinding sound, accompanied by a
strange tremor in the planks on which they stood, as if the house were
gradually coming alive! There could be no mistake. The flood had risen
sufficiently to float the house, and it was beginning to slide from its
foundations!
"Peegwish," he said, quickly dropping the things with which he had been
busy, "is there a stout rope anywhere? Oh, yes; I forgot," he added,
springing towards the attic. "Blessings on you, Beauty, for having
guided me here!"
In a few seconds a stout rope or cable was procured. The end of this
Ian ran out at the main doorway, round through the parlour window, and
tied it in a trice. The other end he coiled in the punt, and soon made
it fast to a stout elm, under whose grateful shade Angus Macdonald had
enjoyed many a pipe and Martha many a cup of tea in other days. The
tree bent slowly forward; the thick rope became rigid. Ian and Peegwish
sat in the boat anxiously looking on.
In that moment of enforced inaction Ian conceived an idea! Thought is
quick, quicker than light, which, we believe, has reached the maximum of
"express speed" in material things. By intermittent flashes, so rapid
that it resembled a stream of sparks, the whole plan rushed through his
mind, from conception to completion. We can only give a suggestive
outline, as follows. The knoll, the smoking-box, the smoker, his words,
"Mark what I say. I will sell this knoll to your father, and give my
daughter to you, when you take that house, and with your own unaided
hands place it on this knoll!" The impossible had, in the wondrous
course of recent events, come just within the verge of possibility--a
stout arm, a strong will, coupled with a high flood--"There is a tide in
the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,"--immortal and
_prophetic_ bard! There could be no chance of Elsie now, but even to
win the right to claim her if she had been willing was better than
nothing. In any case old Angus and the knoll would be united!
"Peegwish!" shouted Ian, turning on the unfortunate ex-brewer with a
flushed face and blazing eyes that caused him to shrink in alarm, "can
you sit still and _do nothing_?"
"Eh?" exclaimed Peegwish, in surprise.
"Bah!" said Ian, seizing the sculls.
The punt whirled round, leaped over the water, dashed through the
doorway, and went crashing into the staircase. Before Peegwish could
pick himself up, Ian had vanished up the stairs. The savage found him a
moment later wildly selecting a rope from the heap that lay on the floor
of the attic. As Peegwish entered, Ian suddenly turned on him with a
gaze of increased intensity. Had the young man gone mad? Peegwish felt
very uncomfortable. He had some reason to! Another thought had flashed
into Ian's mind--the words "your own unaided hands" troubled him.
Peegwish could be kept out of the boat, but he could not be kept from
rendering aid of some sort, in some way or other. There was but one
resource.
Ian sprang on Peegwish like a lion. The savage was both bold and
strong, but he was elderly, and Ian was young and bolder; besides, he
had the unusual strength of a half-madman at that moment. Down went the
ex-brewer. He struggled hard. Ian crushed him in his arms, raised him,
crammed him into a chair, seized a pliant rope and bound him therewith,
winding him and the chair round and round in his haste--for there was no
time to tie knots--until he resembled a gigantic spool of ravelled
thread. Not a moment too soon! There was a snap outside; the rope was
gone! A grind, a slide, and then a lurch, as of a ship at sea.
Ian is on the staircase now, in the punt, and out upon the flood with a
stout rope fast to the stern and to the door-post. Panting from his
recent exertions, and half-wild with the mingled excitement, danger,
novelty, and fun of the thing, he draws two or three long breaths as he
grasps the sculls and looks quickly round.
The house moves sluggishly, probably retarded by sunken shrubs, or
dragging debris connected with the foundation. This is somewhat of a
relief. There is time. He pulls ahead till the rope tightens, and then
stands up in the punt to observe the situation critically. The current
is bearing him straight towards the knoll. So far well; but there are
two slightly diverging currents on right and left, caused by the knoll
itself, which are so strong that if the house should get fairly into
either of them no power that he possessed could prevent its being swept,
on the one hand, into the main current of the Red River, on the other
hand away over the flooded plains. To watch with lynx eyes the
slightest tendency to divergence on the part of the house now absorbs
his whole being. But thought again intervenes. What if he should be
observed by those at Willow Creek, and they should send assistance?
horror! But by good fortune all the males at the Creek have departed,
and none are left but women. He casts one of the lynx glances in that
direction--no one is coming. He breathes again, freely. Suddenly the
house diverges a little to the right. Away flies the punt to the left,
and he is just about to bend to the sculls with the force of Goliath,
when he perceives his mistake--the divergence was to the _left_! In
agonies of haste he shoots to the other side, where he discovers that
the divergence must have been in his own excited brain, for the house
still holds on the even tenor of its way; and Ian, puffing straight
ahead, tightens the rope, and helps it on its voyage.
Presently there is a sudden, and this time a decided divergence to the
right--probably caused by some undercurrent acting on the foundations.
Away goes the punt in the opposite direction, and now Goliath and
David together were babes to Ian! Talk of horse-power.
Elephanto-hippopotamus-Power is a more appropriate term. The muscles of
his arms rise up like rolls of gutta-percha; the knotted veins stand out
on his flushed forehead, but all in vain--the house continues to
diverge, and Ian feeling the game to be all but lost, pulls with the
concentrated energy of rage and despair. The sculls bend like wands,
the rowlocks creak, the thole-pins crack. It won't do. As well might
mortal man pull against Niagara falls.
At this moment of horrible disappointment the house touches something
submerged--a post, a fence, a mound; he knows not nor cares what--which
checks the divergence and turns the house back in the right direction.
What a rebound there is in Ian's heart! He would cheer if there were a
cubic inch of air to spare in his labouring chest--but there is not, and
what of it remains must be used in a tough pull to the opposite side,
for the sheer given to the building has been almost too strong. In a
few minutes his efforts have been successful. The house is bearing
steadily though slowly down in the right direction.
Ian rests on his oars a few seconds, and wipes his heated brow.
So--in the great battle of life we sometimes are allowed to pause and
breathe awhile in the very heat of conflict; and happy is it for us if
our thoughts and hearts go out towards Him whose love is ever near to
bless those who trust in it.
He is drawing near to the knoll now, and there seems every chance of
success; but the nearer he draws to the goal the greater becomes the
risk of divergence, for while the slack water at the head of the knoll
becomes slacker, so that the house seems to have ceased moving, the
diverging currents on either side become swifter, and their
suction-power more dangerous. The anxiety of the pilot at this stage,
and his consequent shooting from side to side, is far more trying than
his more sustained efforts had been.
At last the punt reaches the smoking-box, which itself stands in several
feet of water, for the ground of the knoll is submerged, its bushes
alone being visible. There is only the length of the rope now between
our hero and victory! In that length, however, there are innumerable
possibilities. Even while he gazes the house bumps on something, slews
round, and is caught by the current on the right. Before Ian has time
to recover from his agony of alarm, and dip the sculls, it bumps again
and slews to the left; a third favouring bump sends it back into the
slack water. The combined bumps have given an impulse to the house
under the influence of which it bears straight down upon the knoll with
considerable force. Its gable-end is close to the smoking-box.
Entranced with expectancy Ian sits in the punt panting and with eyes
flashing. There is a sudden shock! Inside the house Peegwish and his
chair are tumbled head over heels. Outside, the gable has just
touched--as it were kissed--the smoking-box, Elsie's "summer-house;"
Beauty, flapping her wings at that moment on the ridge-pole, crows, and
Angus Macdonald's dwelling is, finally and fairly, hard and fast upon
Sam Ravenshaw's knoll.