There was trouble and procrastination about the half-breed guides that
Trafford had arranged should meet them at St. John's, and it was three
weeks from their reaching Newfoundland before they got themselves and
their guides and equipment and general stores aboard the boat for Port
Dupre. Thence he had planned they should go in the Gibson schooner to
Manivikovik, the Marconi station at the mouth of the Green River, and
thence past the new pulp-mills up river to the wilderness. There were
delays and a few trivial, troublesome complications in carrying out this
scheme, but at last a day came when Trafford could wave good-bye to the
seven people and eleven dogs which constituted the population of Peter
Hammond's, that last rude outpost of civilization twenty miles above the
pulp-mill, and turn his face in good earnest towards the wilderness.
Neither he nor Marjorie looked back at the headland for a last glimpse
of the little settlement they were leaving. Each stared ahead over the
broad, smooth sweep of water, broken by one transverse bar of foaming
shallows, and scanned the low, tree-clad hills beyond that drew together
at last in the distant gorge out of which the river came. The morning
was warm and full of the promise of a hot noon, so that the veils they
wore against the assaults of sand-flies and mosquitoes were already a
little inconvenient. It seemed incredible in this morning glow that the
wooded slopes along the shore of the lake were the border of a land in
which nearly half the inhabitants die of starvation. The deep-laden
canoes swept almost noiselessly through the water with a rhythmic
alternation of rush and pause as the dripping paddles drove and
returned. Altogether there were four long canoes and five Indian breeds
in their party, and when they came to pass through shallows both
Marjorie and Trafford took a paddle.
They came to the throat of the gorge towards noon, and found strong
flowing deep water between its high purple cliffs. All hands had to
paddle again, and it was only when they came to rest in a pool to eat a
mid-day meal and afterwards to land upon a mossy corner for a stretch and
a smoke, that Marjorie discovered the peculiar beauty of the rock about
them. On the dull purplish-grey surfaces played the most extraordinary
mist of luminous iridescence. It fascinated her. Here was a land whose
common substance had this gemlike opalescence. But her attention was
very soon withdrawn from these glancing splendours.
She had had to put aside her veil to eat, and presently she felt the
vividly painful stabs of the black-fly and discovered blood upon her
face. A bigger fly, the size and something of the appearance of a small
wasp, with an evil buzz, also assailed her and Trafford. It was a bad
corner for flies; the breeds even were slapping their wrists and
swearing under the torment, and every one was glad to embark and push on
up the winding gorge. It opened out for a time, and then the wooded
shores crept in again, and in another half-hour they saw ahead of them a
long rush of foaming waters among tumbled rocks that poured down from a
brimming, splashing line of light against the sky. They crossed the
river, ran the canoes into an eddy under the shelter of a big stone and
began to unload. They had reached their first portage.
The rest of the first day was spent in packing and lugging first the
cargoes and then the canoes up through thickets and over boulders and
across stretches of reindeer moss for the better part of two miles to a
camping ground about half-way up the rapids. Marjorie and Trafford tried
to help with the carrying, but this evidently shocked and distressed the
men too much, so they desisted and set to work cutting wood and
gathering moss for the fires and bedding for the camp. When the iron
stove was brought up the man who had carried it showed them how to put
it up on stakes and start a fire in it, and then Trafford went to the
river to get water, and Marjorie made a kind of flour cake in the
frying-pan in the manner an American woman from the wilderness had once
shown her, and boiled water for tea. The twilight had deepened to night
while the men were still stumbling up the trail with the last two
canoes.
It gave Marjorie a curiously homeless feeling to stand there in the open
with the sunset dying away below the black scrubby outlines of the
treetops uphill to the northwest, and to realize the nearest roof was
already a day's toilsome journey away. The cool night breeze blew upon
her bare face and arms--for now the insects had ceased from troubling
and she had cast aside gloves and veil and turned up her sleeves to
cook--and the air was full of the tumult of the rapids tearing seaward
over the rocks below. Struggling through the bushes towards her was an
immense, headless quadruped with unsteady legs and hesitating paces, two
of the men carrying the last canoe. Two others were now assisting
Trafford to put up the little tent that was to shelter her, and the
fifth was kneeling beside her very solemnly and respectfully cutting
slices of bacon for her to fry. The air was very sweet, and she wished
she could sleep not in the tent but under the open sky.
It was queer, she thought, how much of the wrappings of civilization had
slipped from them already. Every day of the journey from London had
released them or deprived them--she hardly knew which--of a multitude of
petty comforts and easy accessibilities. The afternoon toil uphill
intensified the effect of having clambered up out of things--to this
loneliness, this twilight openness, this simplicity.
The men ate apart at a fire they made for themselves, and after Trafford
and Marjorie had supped on damper, bacon and tea, he smoked. They were
both too healthily tired to talk very much. There was no moon but a
frosty brilliance of stars, the air which had been hot and sultry at
mid-day grew keen and penetrating, and after she had made him tell her
the names of constellations she had forgotten, she suddenly perceived
the wisdom of the tent, went into it--it was sweet and wonderful with
sprigs of the Labrador tea-shrub--undressed, and had hardly rolled
herself up into a cocoon of blankets before she was fast asleep.
She was awakened by a blaze of sunshine pouring into the tent, a smell
of fried bacon and Trafford's voice telling her to get up. "They've gone
on with the first loads," he said. "Get up, wrap yourself in a blanket,
and come and bathe in the river. It's as cold as ice."
She blinked at him. "Aren't you stiff?" she asked.
"I was stiffer before I bathed," he said.
She took the tin he offered her. (They weren't to see china cups again
for a year.) "It's woman's work getting tea," she said as she drank.
"You can't be a squaw all at once," said Trafford.