HEADQUARTERS--THE MEN--DISPUTATION AND UNCERTAINTY--NEW USES FOR THE
SKINS OF DEAD BOYS!--MUTINOUS RESOLVES.
Moose Fort, the headquarters and depot of the fur-traders, who prosecute
their traffic in almost all parts of the wild and uninhabited regions of
North America, stands on an island near the mouth of Moose River. Like
all the establishments of the fur-traders, it is a solitary group of
wooden buildings, far removed beyond the influences--almost beyond the
ken--of the civilised world, and surrounded by the primeval wilderness,
the only tenants of which were, at the time we write of, a few scattered
tribes of Muskigon Indians, and the wild animals whose flesh furnished
them with food and whose skins constituted their sole wealth. There was
little of luxury at Moose Fort. The walls of the houses within the
stockade, that served more as an ornament than a defence, were of
painted, in some cases unpainted, planks. The floors, ceilings, chairs,
tables, and, in short, all the articles of furniture in the place, were
made of the same rough material. A lofty scaffolding of wood rose above
the surrounding buildings, and served as an outlook, whence, at the
proper season, longing eyes were wont to be turned towards the sea in
expectation of "the ship" which paid the establishment an annual visit
from England. Several large iron field-pieces stood before the front
gate; but they were more for the sake of appearance than use, and were
never fired except for the purpose of saluting the said ship on the
occasions of her arrival and departure. The first boom of the cannon
unlocks the long-closed portals of connection between Moose Fort and
England; the second salvo shuts them up again in their frozen domains
for another year! A century and a half ago, the band of "adventurers
trading into Hudson's Bay" felled the first trees and pitched their
tents on the shores of James's Bay, and successive generations of
fur-traders have kept the post until the present day; yet there is
scarcely a symptom of the presence of man beyond a few miles round the
establishment. Years ago the fort was built, and there it stands now,
with new tenants, it is true, but in its general aspect unchanged; and
there it is likely to remain, wrapped in its barrier of all but
impregnable solitude, for centuries to come.
Nevertheless, Moose is a comfortable place in its way, and when
contrasted with other trading establishments is a very palace and temple
of luxury. There are men within its walls who can tell of log-huts and
starvation, solitude and desolation, compared with which Moose is a
terrestrial paradise. Frank Morton, whom we have introduced in the
first chapter, said, on his arrival at Moose, that it appeared to him to
be the very fag-end of creation. He had travelled night and day for six
weeks from what he considered the very outskirts of civilisation,
through uninhabited forests and almost unknown rivers, in order to get
to it; and while the feeling of desolation that overwhelmed him on his
first arrival was strong upon him, he sighed deeply, and called it a
"horrid dull hole." But Frank was of a gay, hearty, joyous disposition,
and had not been there long ere he loved the old fort dearly. Poor
fellow! far removed though he was from his fellow-men at Moose, he
afterwards learned that he had but obtained an indistinct notion of the
signification of the word "solitude."
There were probably about thirty human beings at Moose, when Mr George
Stanley, one of the principal fur-traders of the place, received orders
from the governor to make preparations, and select men, for the purpose
of proceeding many hundred miles deeper into the northern wilderness,
and establishing a station on the distant, almost unknown, shores of
Ungava Bay. No one at Moose had ever been there before; no one knew
anything about the route, except from the vague report of a few Indians;
and the only thing that was definitely known about the locality at all
was, that its inhabitants were a few wandering tribes of Esquimaux, who
were at deadly feud with the Indians, and generally massacred all who
came within their reach. What the capabilities of the country were, in
regard to timber and provisions, nobody knew, and, fortunately for the
success of the expedition, nobody cared! At least those who were to
lead the way did not; and this admirable quality of total indifference
to prospective dangers is that which, to a great extent, insures success
in a forlorn hope.
Of the leaders of this expedition the reader already knows something.
George Stanley was nearly six feet high, forty years of age, and endued
with a decision of character that, but for his quiet good humour, would
have been deemed obstinacy. He was deliberate in all his movements, and
exercised a control over his feelings that quite concealed his naturally
enthusiastic disposition. Moreover, he was married, and had a daughter
of ten years of age. This might be thought a disadvantage in his
present circumstances; but the governor of the fur-traders, a most
energetic and active ruler, thought otherwise. He recommended that the
family should be left at Moose until an establishment had been built,
and a winter passed at Ungava. Afterwards they could join him there.
As for Frank Morton, he was an inch taller than his friend Stanley, and
equally powerful; fair-haired, blue-eyed, hilarious, romantic,
twenty-two years of age, and so impulsive that, on hearing of the
proposed expedition from one of his comrades, who happened to be present
when Stanley was reading the dispatches, he sprang from his chair, which
he upset, dashed out at the door, which he banged, and hurried to his
friend's quarters in order to be first to volunteer his services as
second in command; which offer was rendered unnecessary by Stanley's
exclaiming, the moment he entered his room--
"Ha, Frank, my lad, the very man I wanted to see! Here's a letter from
headquarters ordering me off on an expedition to Ungava. Now, I want
volunteers; will you go!"
It is needless to add that Frank's blue eyes sparkled with animation as
he seized his friend's hand and replied, "To the North Pole if you like,
or farther if need be!"
It was evening. The sun was gilding the top of the flagstaff with a
parting kiss, and the inhabitants of Moose Fort, having finished their
daily toil, were making preparations for their evening meal. On the end
of the wharf that jutted out into the stream was assembled a picturesque
group of men, who, from the earnest manner in which they conversed, and
the energy of their gesticulations, were evidently discussing a subject
of more than ordinary interest. Most of them were clad in corduroy
trousers, gartered below the knee with thongs of deer-skin, and coarse,
striped cotton shirts, open at the neck, so as to expose their sunburnt
breasts. A few wore caps which, whatever might have been their original
form, were now so much soiled and battered out of shape by long and
severe service that they were nondescript; but most of these hardy
backwoodsmen were content with the covering afforded by their thick,
bushy locks.
"No, no," exclaimed a short, thick-set, powerful man, with a somewhat
ascetic cast of countenance; "I've seen more than enough o' these
rascally Huskies [Esquimaux]. 'Tis well for me that I'm here this
blessed day, an' not made into a dan to bob about in Hudson's Straits at
the tail of a white whale, like that poor boy Peter who was shot by them
varmints."
"What's a dan?" asked a young half-breed who had lately arrived at
Moose, and knew little of Esquimau implements.
"What a green-horn you must be, Francois, not to know what a dan is!"
replied another, who was inclined to be quizzical. "Why, it's a sort of
sea-carriage that the Esquimaux tie to the tail of a walrus or sea-horse
when they feel inclined for a drive. When they can't get a sea-horse
they catch a white whale asleep, and wake him up after fastening the dan
to his tail. I suppose they have conjurers or wizards among them, since
Massan told us just now that poor Peter was--"
"Bah! gammon," interrupted Francois with a smile, as he turned to the
first speaker. "But tell me, Massan, what is a dan?"
"It's a sort o' float or buoy, lad, used by the Huskies, and is made out
o' the skin o' the seal. They tie it with a long line to their whale
spears to show which way the fish bolts when struck."
"And did they use Peter's skin for such a purpose?" inquired Francois
earnestly.
"They did," replied Massan.
"And did you see them do it?"
"Yes, I did."
Francois gazed intently into his comrade's face as he spoke; but Massan
was an adept at what is usually called drawing the long bow, and it was
with the most imperturbable gravity that he continued--
"Yes, I saw them do it; but I could not render any assistance to the
poor child, for I was lying close behind a rock at the time, with an
arrow sticking between my shoulders, and a score o' them oily varmints
a-shoutin', and yellin', and flourishing their spears in search o' me."
"Tell us how it happened, Massan. Let's hear the story," chorused the
men, as they closed round their comrade.
"Well then," began the stout backwoodsman, proceeding leisurely to fill
his pipe from an ornamented bag that hung at his belt, "here goes. It
was about the year--a--I forget the year, but it don't matter--that we
were ordered off on an expedition to the Huskies; 'xactly sich a one as
they wants us to go on now, and--but you've heerd o' that business,
lads, haven't you?"
"Yes, yes, we've heard all about it; go on."
"Well," continued Massan, "I needn't be wastin' time tellin' you how we
failed in that affair, and how the Huskies killed some of our men and
burnt our ship to the water's edge. After it was all over, and they
thought they had killed us all, I was, as I said, lyin' behind a great
rock in a sort o' cave, lookin' at the dirty villains as they danced
about on the shore, and took possession of all our goods. Suddenly I
seed two o' them carry Peter down to the beach, an' I saw, as they
passed me, that he was quite dead. In less time than I can count a
hundred they took the skin off him, cut off his head, sewed up the hole,
tied his arms and legs in a knot, blew him full o' wind till he was fit
to bu'st, an' then hung him up to dry in the sun! In fact, they made a
_dan_ of him!"
A loud shout of laughter greeted this startling conclusion. In truth,
we must do Massan the justice to say, that although he was much in the
habit of amusing his companions by entertaining them with anecdotes
which originated entirely in his own teeming fancy, he never actually
_deceived_ them, but invariably, either by a sly glance or by the
astounding nature of his communication, gave them to understand that he
was dealing not with fact but fiction.
"But seriously, lads," said Francois, whose intelligence, added to a
grave, manly countenance and a tall, muscular frame, caused him to be
regarded by his comrades as a sort of leader both in action and in
council, "what do you think of our bourgeois' plan? For my part, I'm
willing enough to go to any reasonable part o' the country where there
are furs and Indians; but as for this Ungava, from what Massan says,
there's neither Indians, nor furs, nor victuals--nothin' but rocks, and
mountains, and eternal winter; and if we do get the Huskies about us,
they'll very likely serve us as they did the last expedition to Richmond
Gulf."
"Ay, ay," cried one of the others, "you may say that, Francois. Nothin'
but frost and starvation, and nobody to bury us when we're dead."
"Except the Huskies," broke in another, "who would save themselves the
trouble by converting us all into dans!"
"Tush, man! stop your clapper," cried Francois, impatiently; "let us
settle this business. You know that Monsieur Stanley said he would
expect us to be ready with an answer to-night.--What think you, Gaspard?
Shall we go, or shall we mutiny?"
The individual addressed was a fine specimen of an animal, but not by
any means a good specimen of a man. He was of gigantic proportions,
straight and tall as a poplar, and endowed with the strength of a
Hercules. His glittering dark eyes and long black hair, together with
the hue of his skin, bespoke him of half-breed extraction. But his
countenance did not correspond to his fine physical proportions. True,
his features were good, but they wore habitually a scowling, sulky
expression, even when the man was pleased, and there was more of sarcasm
than joviality in the sound when Gaspard condescended to laugh.
"I'll be shot if I go to such a hole for the best bourgeois in the
country," said he in reply to Francois' question.
"You'll be dismissed the service if you don't," remarked Massan with a
smile.
To this Gaspard vouchsafed no reply save a growl that, to say the best
of it, did not sound amiable.
"Well, I think that we're all pretty much of one mind on the point,"
continued Francois; "and yet I feel half ashamed to refuse after all,
especially when I see the good will with which Messieurs Stanley and
Morton agree to go."
"I suppose _you_ expect to be a bourgeois too some day," growled Gaspard
with a sneer.
"Eh, tu gros chien!" cried Francois, as with flashing eyes and clinched
fists he strode up to his ill-tempered comrade.
"Come, come, Francois; don't quarrel for nothing," said Massan,
interposing his broad shoulders and pushing him vigorously back.
At that moment an exclamation from one of the men diverted the attention
of the others.
"Voila! the canoe."
"Ay, it's Monsieur Stanley's canoe. I saw him and Monsieur Morton start
for the swamp this morning."
"I wonder what Dick Prince would have done in this business had he been
here," said Francois to Massan in a low tone, as they stood watching the
approach of their bourgeois' canoe.
"Can't say. I half think he would have gone."
"There's no chance of him coming back in time, I fear."
"None; unless he prevails on some goose to lend him a pair of wings for
a day or two. He won't be back from the hunt for three weeks good."
In a few minutes more the canoe skimmed up to the wharf.
"Here, lads," cried Mr Stanley, as he leaped ashore and dragged the
canoe out of the water; "one of you come and lift this canoe up the
bank, and take these geese to the kitchen."
Two of the men instantly hastened to obey, and Stanley, with the gun and
paddles under his arm, proceeded towards the gateway of the fort. As he
passed the group assembled on the wharf, he turned and said--
"You'll come to the hall in an hour, lads; I shall expect you to be
ready with an answer by that time."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied several of the men.
"But we won't go for all your expectations," said one in an undertone to
a comrade.
"I should think not," whispered another.
"I'll be hanged, and burnt, and frozen if _I_ do," said a third.
In the meantime Mr Stanley walked briskly towards his dwelling, and
left the men to grumble over their troubles and continue their debate as
to whether they should or should not agree to go on the pending
expedition to the distant regions of Ungava.